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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25456240">Let the Earth Sing Green</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ardatli/pseuds/Ardatli'>Ardatli</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Waves and Particles [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Pacific Rim (Movies), Young Avengers (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, And Darcy/Tommy is finally an official tag in the menu, Background Billy/Teddy, Canon Bisexual Character, David has to decide how much bullshit he's willing to deal with, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Giant robots and Power Rangers cameos, M/M, My rowboat and I row it alone, Previous Tommy/Kate, Thinkfast is endgame, Thinkfast starts ramping up around chapter seven, Tommy has some trauma to deal with, Trans Tommy Oliver, the boys get their acts together eventually</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 09:42:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>89,385</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25456240</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ardatli/pseuds/Ardatli</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years since the launch of the world’s first Jaeger, almost seven years since K Day, the media and the bookies were still confused about exactly how to record the various kill records set by Magnus Echo, Teddy Altman, and the Maximoff twins.</p><p>Tommy Maximoff no longer gave a shit. Given that he’d swapped co-pilots there and back again, his personal record would always trump those of both the dorks he was currently riding with.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Darcy Lewis/Tommy Shepherd, David Alleyne/Tommy Shepherd</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Waves and Particles [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/820536</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>174</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>103</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>It's been a while, I know. Between finishing the PhD, dealing with life and family, and then the pandemic, all the words dried up and I haven't touched anything fiction-related since mid-December. But then Empyre started and inspiration kicked back in and I figure if I'm posting chapters of this, and people read it, then I'll be forced out of my slump and back into writing for my favourite fictional peeps. </p><p>Anyway, here's the final story in the Young Avengers / Pacific Rim mashup that began with He Dreams in Kaiju Blue. I anticipate that it'll be about 80,000 words, but we'll see how it goes. Also, there are Power Rangers. Sort of.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p><br/>  <strong>  </strong></p>
</div><p>
  <strong>November 2019, San Francisco</strong>
</p>
<p>Five years since the launch of the world’s first Jaeger, almost seven years since K Day, the media and the bookies were still confused about exactly how to record the various kill records set by Magnus Echo, Teddy Altman, and the Maximoff twins.</p>
<p>Tommy Maximoff no longer gave a shit. Given that he’d swapped co-pilots there and back again, his personal record would always trump those of both the dorks he was currently riding with.</p><hr/>
<p>It was a common thing to hear, in the middle of the Kaiju War. That things were moving too fast, that life changed too quickly, that humanity had to work hard to catch up to a new world order. But ‘too fast’ was all relative. Slower was boring.</p>
<p>Not that Tommy <em>wanted</em> the mortality rates and billions of dollars in destruction that had come with the opening of the Breach, but now that it had happened… there didn’t seem to be any point in romanticising how straight-jacketed things used to be. School, work, dating, marriage, kids, work, death. What was the point?</p>
<p>He’d given Billy shit for years about being the one to drag them into the PPDC Academy program, but he’d have gone anyway. Magnus Echo, being a pilot, <em>knowing</em> at a cell-deep level, for the first time in his entire life, that he was worth something—he’d have walked across lava to get there.</p>
<p>And he’d do anything to keep it. Don’t let anyone else hear him say that, though. That kind of stupid sentimentality was reserved for the drift, when he couldn’t avoid it. S’alright. Billy and Teddy were used to that kind of crap.</p>
<p>They practically <em>lived </em>for that kind of crap.  </p>
<p>But all together it meant that when there was a long gap between attacks, and his life-long partner in crime was spending most of his waking hours playing smooshy-face with Tommy’s <em>newest</em> partner-in-crime, life around the Shatterdome had gotten pretty damned dull.</p><hr/>
<p>It was a misnomer to call Teddy a ‘new’ partner in crime. Tommy’d been piloting Magnus Echo with him for almost two years now. Teddy’d shown up while Billy had in a coma, once everyone had given up on the idea that he’d ever come back. Everyone except Tommy, Dr. Hussein, and Teddy Altman, the gung-ho rookie who’d been handed to Tommy like a cheap replacement.</p>
<p>
  <em>Sorry you broke your co-pilot. Too bad he wasn’t still under warrantee. </em>
</p>
<p>Then Billy’d woken up. He’d woken up from six months out cold and had to relearn everything from sitting up to walking without a cane. It’d been obvious to everyone but him that getting back in a Jaeger was a pipe dream, but despite appearances Tommy wasn’t the most stubborn of the Maximoff twins. Not by a long shot.</p>
<p>So there’d been another five months gone while medical tried to put humpty-dumpty back together again, and Billy had resisted everything that didn’t lead directly to reinstatement as an on-duty Ranger.</p>
<p>The end result of it all… it was a happy ending, sure. Billy was back, busted knees and all. And somewhere in the middle of being unconscious and half-dead he’d figured out a way to bend the Drift to his will.</p>
<p>It wasn’t supposed to be possible, what they’d pulled off—the three-way link, with Magnus suspended in the middle like a mammoth metal archangel. But it worked. And it kept working. And for the last six months they’d run patrols and fought kaiju as a triad, Teddy and Tommy in the cockpit and Billy plugged in from LOCCENT, directing strategy from a birds-eye view.</p>
<p>It meant that Tommy occasionally got more than a birds-eye view of his brother’s sex life, but they were getting better at figuring out what to lock down, and how much, without threatening the connection.</p>
<p>And life went on.</p><hr/>
<p>Raised voices were nothing new in the marshal’s office, but Tommy still slowed down to get a better listen-in anyway. Mid-afternoon shift change had just happened—Yankee Hawker coming in from patrol and Papa Valentine going on ready-5—and everything had been running smooth as silk. So why was Danvers slamming down the phone loud enough that he could hear it in the hallway?</p>
<p>The San Fran Shatterdome looked like any other PPDC installation, and probably every other military base world-wide, all grey concrete and olive drab metal, coloured tapes and paint lines on the walls indicating arcane secrets and escape hatches. The heavy door to Danvers’ office stood slightly open, no name plate necessary. Scuffs and dents along the bottom spoke to the years the base had stood here, and the way Marshal Danvers tended to kick the door open and closed when she was mad about something.</p>
<p>“Maximoff, is that you lurking out there?”</p>
<p>Shit. Instinctively, Tommy ran back through the last few days in his head. He had been abnormally well-behaved; not even any fake gossip showing up in the tabloids. The celebrity blogosphere loved the Jaeger pilots, loved making shit up about them even more. But nope, not this time. His hands were clean.</p>
<p>Still, just in case- “Not the twin you’re looking for.” Tommy put his hand against the cool steel of the door and pushed it open far enough to see inside. Danvers sat at her desk, sprawled back in her chair and twirling a pen over and around her knuckles like she was trying to decide whose eye socket to fire it into. “Billy’s getting his oil changed in the infirmary.”</p>
<p>Knee joints tested to see if the socket degradation was progressing, but same difference.</p>
<p>“What?” Danvers’ brow furrowed and she frowned at him. “No, I don’t want to know. And it’s you I need. Sit down, Tom.” She pointed with her pen at the empty guest chair waiting on his side of the desk.</p>
<p>So he sat, despite the half-dozen derailing questions and comments that were bubbling to the tip of his tongue.</p>
<p>“What can I do for you, Marshal?”</p>
<p>They’d started out as team-mates, once upon a time. Tommy, Billy, Cass and Scott had been the fresh new academy grads, Carol and Jess the veteran monster-hunters fresh out of a Mark-1 Jaeger. It had been awesome, amazing, exhilarating, even, to watch them fight. He’d picked up half his moves from training with Jess in the kwoon. He was faster but she’d been slicker, getting in under his defenses over and over again until he’d finally gotten good enough to take her feet out from under her. She’d called him ‘kiddo,’ ruffled his hair, made him feel like he was home.</p>
<p>Then Carol’d gotten hurt, then benched. Permanently. Jess had gone to Alaska and Carol had vanished down into a bottle. They’d gotten Kate and America as replacements, then Eli and Joe-</p>
<p>Anyway. Carol left and a couple of years later Marshal Danvers had come back, sober, sadder, and with more of that shit-kicker attitude wrapped around her like armour.</p>
<p>He couldn’t blame her for any of that. But sitting in Marshal Danvers’ office was a hell of a lot different than kicking back with Carol in the wardroom. She knew it too.</p>
<p>In the here-and-now, Danvers was frowning, but it wasn’t directed at him specifically. She pulled up a computer projection and flicked though what looked like personnel files, the notes and pictures moving past him too quickly for him to catch the names. “Cadet assignments,” she explained, which didn’t actually explain that much. San Francisco wasn’t a training school. “There’s a new group and they’re coming here in two days. You’re on deck for instruction.”</p>
<p>Tommy had been slouching casually in the padded office chair, but that made him bolt upright in a mix of shock and horror. A glint of what looked like amusement touched Danvers’ eyes briefly before it was gone again. “Come on,” he argued. “Why aren’t they going to the academy? We’re a working dome, not a kindergarten.”</p>
<p>“They’ve done eight months there, and now the brass want to get them acclimatized to a Shatterdome ASAP. It’s not the way we’ve done things up to now, but times are changing. The Kaiju events are starting to pick up in frequency, the new Mark-IV tech is being deployed within the year and the order’s come down to get more pilots ready.”</p>
<p>“Mark-IVs?” Tommy whistled low. Magnus Echo was his baby and always would be, the heavily-modified Mark-II Jaeger one of the finest pieces of technology humankind had ever dreamed up. Even so, he still drooled a little at the idea of getting himself and Teddy into the cockpit of a Mark-IV. New HUDs, lighter connection rigs for the pilots, smoother interface all around—Darcy had been singing their praises for months. One of these days. “Are we-”</p>
<p>“Don’t get excited about the tech just yet.” Danvers bounced one end of her pen off the edge of her desk. It was a tell, meant he wasn’t going to like whatever it was she was working around to verbalizing.</p>
<p>“Fine.” He let it go, but just for the moment. “You’ve got six records up—three pairs of co-pilots?”</p>
<p>She bounced the pen again. Here it came.</p>
<p>“… no pairs. Just six pilots.”</p>
<p>Tommy frowned back at her. That didn’t track at all. Pilots came in pairs, it was how things worked. Except for himself, Teddy and Billy, who worked as a triad. But that was extenuating circumstances. “… I’m not following you.”</p>
<p>“What you did with Magnus Echo inspired a lot of work on the tech side. The Mark-IIIs are going to be fitted with a new system to improve drift compatibility, or possibly lower the threshold for a pilot-to-pilot connection. I’m not entirely clear on the specifics, to be honest, and I haven’t asked.”</p>
<p>That sounded like something Kitty and maybe David could have been involved with; definitely Darcy and the Foster woman she worked for. Tommy had some digging to do.</p>
<p>In the meantime — “Which is why they’re not coming with co-pilots? What can<em> new tech</em> possibly do to create drift compatibility if there isn’t anything there already?”</p>
<p>“Beats the hell out of me. It’s still classified at a level above me,” Danvers explained, and bounced the pen again a few more times for good measure. She swiped the circling projection into a ball and flung it toward the export bin. A data key blinked a couple of times before she popped the key out of the computer and tossed it at him. Tommy caught it automatically.</p>
<p>“Read their files, get familiar with their backgrounds. They’re being flown in on Friday and they’re your responsibility for the next six weeks. Get them working together in the kwoon, haul them down to J-tech and get their hands dirty, let the K-science crowd get them good and freaked out. Unless there’s a Kaiju event, this is your top priority.”</p>
<p>Tommy turned the key over in his hands, uncertainty trying to settle into a solid ball inside. “You realize who you’re talking to, right? I’m not the leader type. Kate would be a better choice,” he pointed out, pasting on a cocky grin to hide the insta-terror at the thought of a bunch of idiot cadets actually trusting <em>him</em> to teach them anything useful. He’d end up getting them killed. Or killing them himself, depending on how annoying they turned out to be. “Or Teddy. Kids love Teddy. Hell, everybody loves that guy. It’s kind of his thing.”</p>
<p>“I’m not giving the job to them, I gave it to you.” Danvers raised an eyebrow, and for a moment he saw Carol in the flicker of her knowing smile. “Don’t fuck it up.”</p><hr/>
<p>“That’s pretty much exactly what Marshal Hill said to me when I got transferred out here.” Teddy was studying the cards in his hand, a frown on his face before he picked one out and set it down next to the cribbage board on the table between him and Billy. Billy was well on track to creaming him; no surprise there. Crib was the family game and the twins had learned to play at their grandfather’s knee. “Do you think they get a script? Or a guidebook on promotion to Marshal that includes motivational one-liners?”</p>
<p>“If they do, it needs a rewrite. I don’t feel motivated. Just annoyed.” Tommy shifted on the broken-down old couch that had graced the Rangers’ dayroom since long before he and Billy had been assigned. A spring creaked in protest somewhere and he flipped himself over to hang upside down, hair brushing the floor and his knees hooked over the couch’s back. </p>
<p>“The cadets should be the ones freaking out,” Eli snorted from the other end of the couch, a tablet in his lap, sound muted, rolling a news feed across the flat screen. “What do you know about teaching?”</p>
<p>“Absolutely nothing,” Tommy agreed, too quickly. “You want the job? I’ll take volunteers.”</p>
<p>Eli shook his head. “Not a chance.”</p>
<p>“Kate?” Tommy turned beseeching, upside-down puppy eyes at Kate. “How about it?”</p>
<p>She barely took her eyes off the video-game death-match she was having out with Joe. He only smiled serenely as his avatar booted hers off the arena cliff to an ignoble death. “As much as I’d love the chance to warp the young minds of the next generation, who do you think is going to be picking up the slack once Magnus goes in for refits? We’re going to be on double-watches until she’s been put back together.”</p>
<p>“Same as we did for you while Hawker was off the rotation, so this is just payback.” Billy shot back, an edge in his voice. Weird. Usually he and Kate were tight.</p>
<p>“You had a chance to road-test the new Connpod setup this morning, didn’t you?” Teddy looked away from the board and dropped his cards to the table with a resigned grimace as Billy double-skunked him. “What did you think?”</p>
<p>“It’s slick,” America reported with a wide grin, her dark eyes alight. “Moving’s a hell of a lot easier, and the new feedback cradles double the sensitivity. You’re gonna love it.” And then they were all off and running, freaking out over every detail of the new systems like they hadn’t been over every last schematic a hundred times before the refits even started.</p>
<p>There had never been the chance that they’d be put on leave for a month while Foster and her crew of mad scientists took his baby apart layer by layer, but this wasn’t the kind of distraction Tommy had been hoping for.</p>
<p>And on the subject of distraction… hanging upside down on the couch was the perfect angle from which to scope out Kate’s legs. Yup, still hot. No surprise there considering how many hours a goddamned day they all spent working out, keeping in shape for the three, four, five days a year when their Jaegers were actually necessary.</p>
<p>Restless. He was restless, and in a way the kwoon wouldn’t fix, an itch somewhere deep in his brain tonight that made sitting still and reading over the files next to impossible. Gravity pulled all the blood to his head and he flipped over, landing easily on his butt on the floor. Billy looked over and his half-smile was one of quiet recognition.</p>
<p>Between the two of them, they could probably find some trouble to cause that would liven things up. Three if the boy scout Tommy called a co-pilot could be convinced to ride along.</p>
<p>It wasn’t his twin who flopped down on the couch next to his head, though. Kate, her game over, slid down to sit next to him on the floor, the faded purple t-shirt she often wore off-duty catching on the cushion and baring the skin on her back before he reached out and tugged it down. Soft, she was soft and warm, but the burn of <em>wanting</em> that he’d long associated with that specific Kate-sensation had gone missing somewhere along the way.</p>
<p>“You’ve got that look in your eye,” she teased quietly, ignoring the flash of a glance Eli sent their way. “What have you got in mind, Trouble?”</p>
<p>“Nothing specific,” he was forced to admit. “I’m open to ideas.”</p>
<p>It was the kind of mood that, in the past, he could easily have solved by rigging a fake snake on a spring in Cassie’s gym locker. The prank wars were buried with her now, in a cold and silent grave in Arlington. Months later the pain still lingered — <em>if he’d only been faster, spotted the second kaiju sooner, made some other choice </em>— but the razor-sharp agony of loss had turned into something duller. Someday it would be a faint bone-bruise, only noticeable when it was deliberately disturbed.</p>
<p>He wasn’t there yet.</p>
<p>And he was too distracted, because he’d missed the other question in Kate’s eyes, one she repeated in words quiet enough to stay semi-private in a room full of other people. “It’s been ages; did you want to come back to the room?”</p>
<p>So he was forced to answer out loud as well, hammer the final nail home officially. “No.” Tommy glanced over in time to see the faint flash of hurt in her eyes. He nudged her side with his elbow, an apology of sorts. “It’s not you. Plural-you, either.” Because she and America came — and <em>came</em> — as a set. “It was fun, a hell of a lot of fun. But I’m only cramping your style these days. And I’m past the point where I need a pity-fuck. I’m okay.”  </p>
<p>It was meant to be encouraging, and after a beat Kate nodded her understanding. She slung her arm around his neck and hugged him tightly. He turned his face into her hair and breathed her in, the faint hint of lilac, and the drive-fluid and sweaty tang they all carried with them. The smell of the Shatterdome. “That was never what it was about, idiot,” she muttered against his head.</p>
<p>“I know.” He let her pull him in one last time, then blew a raspberry against her jaw to make her let him go. “I’m good, I swear. It’s just time to move on. Variety is the spice of life.”</p>
<p>Kate sighed and he could hear her eyeroll in the puff of air. “I still love you, you know,” she said with the kind of deep affection he’d have killed for once. He’d kill for her now, without question. It was a different kind of love than what he’d first wanted, years ago when Rangers Bishop and Chavez had shown up at the front door with their shiny new Jaeger. The change didn’t hurt anymore.</p>
<p>“I know, kid. I love you too. But your girl’s waiting.” He nodded at the door, America leaning against the frame, her conversation long since over.  </p>
<p>Billy and Teddy had started another game, and Billy paused in the middle of a strategy lesson to look up as Kate left.  At least he’d been subtle about the eavesdropping, but Tommy was under no illusions. He and Kate would be the main topic of conversation in the love nest tonight. Thank God for the room swap. Retiring to his single would make it a whole lot easier to avoid Billy’s well-meaning but nosy questions.</p>
<p>And none of it solved his most immediate problem. Tommy rose to his feet and headed for the door himself, the data key burning a proverbial hole in his pocket.</p>
<p>Thank you, next.</p><hr/>
<p>Requisitions barely batted an eye when Tommy signed out the motorcycle from the motor pool again and hit the road. He didn’t need official liberty to take a spin for an hour or two, and it was better than hanging around base making himself crazy. The service road down to the freeway was empty except for a couple of parked cars and Tommy took it at top speed, lifting his face into the wind.</p>
<p>Night had settled in and Tommy rode through it, sliding smooth from one pool of light to another. The heavy engine thrummed between his thighs, and crisp winter air burned clean down into his lungs. He was lightweight, almost airborne, no suit of armour around him now except the helmet and the leather jacket, too soft to count for anything when compared to the weight of a drivesuit, of Magnus.</p>
<p>His problems would all be waiting for him when he got back to the Shatterdome, but for the moment, at least, he could outrun them.</p><hr/>
<p>The base had settled into the quiet of third shift by the time he checked the bike back in and started wandering the halls in his civvies. Jeans were a lot more durable than BDUs if he took a spill, and the leather jacket fit snugly across his shoulders. It felt good, like the skin from an old life.</p>
<p>Dinner long over, the cafeteria was basically empty when Tommy headed inside. The kitchen was always open for officers and rangers, at least, on the hunt for late-night snacks. A cruise through only netted him a couple of apples and a beer. Not the world’s best combination, but at least it was sort-of healthy. Beer counted as a grain.</p>
<p>A handful of techs were nursing coffees at one of the far tables, and the only other person around sat on his own, frowning down at a data pad, a half-eaten butter tart sitting abandoned on a plate at his elbow next to his fancy glasses. The yellow shades acted as a HUD when he was in LOCCENT; they were turned off and useless now.</p>
<p>Tommy slid into the empty chair across from David and popped the tab on his can. It opened with a soft hiss of fizz. David sat up from his reading, looked him over with a critical eye. “Hot date tonight?” he asked dryly.</p>
<p>Tommy grinned. “Not yet,” he teased, returning the once-over, slightly more exaggerated. “You offering?”</p>
<p>For all that he dressed like an accountant, in button-down shirts and sweaters that looked like they’d be soft to touch, David was a great-looking guy. Tommy couldn’t remember ever seeing him flirt, but he exuded a steady confidence and ease in his own skin that suggested all kinds of good things. Nice hands, too, strong and capable, not roughed-up and calloused like Tommy’s. Desk job vs fighting for a living, that was what that was.  </p>
<p>He was more ‘tired’ than ‘hot dude’ tonight though, and his expression wasn’t exactly welcoming. Hell, it all but closed down when Tommy slouched in his chair, one arm thrown over the back, and waggled an eyebrow.</p>
<p>“Funny. Is there something I can help you with, Ranger?”</p>
<p>Ooh, the rebuff. Not that Tommy had actually been serious. David was LOCCENT mission control, PPDC big shot. And a friend, Tommy had to remind himself. Every Ranger’s best support. Messing with that, just because he was bored? Bad idea.</p>
<p>“Just checking in,” Tommy replied breezily. He stood, snagging the leg of the chair with his foot and pulling it back in under the table. “Those the refit specs?”</p>
<p>A frown flickered across David’s face and then it was gone, and everything was back to normal. “Mmhm. I’m going over the logs from Hawker’s test run today. It’s looking good,” he offered with what was probably meant to be a reassuring smile. “Foster and her team know what they’re doing.”</p>
<p>“They’d better. That’s my girl going on the chopping block next,” Tommy grumbled. He swigged from the cold can in his hand, the condensation on the aluminum sliding against his fingers. “Cheers,” he added, tipping the can in David’s direction. But if the guy wanted to be alone, Tommy would leave him alone. “Have a good one.”</p>
<p>He flipped one of the apples in his hand, bounced it off his elbow and caught it again as he headed for the door. For a second he thought he’d heard someone calling after him, but when he looked back, David was already looking back at his work.</p>
<p>Just another voice in Tommy’s head.  </p><hr/>
<p>The twins’ old room had a different layout now that Teddy was in there. They’d disassembled the old bunk beds and pushed them together, the fake double now taking up most of the floor space. The change was as authorized as Tommy and Teddy’s room switch had been in the first place, which was to say not at all. But as long as they kept up their end of the bargain — dead kaiju, and minimal administrative headaches — the brass turned a blind eye.</p>
<p>Teddy was already sprawled across the bed reading when Tommy wandered in, Billy on the floor doing one of the daily-dozen physio exercises that were supposed to keep his knees from seizing up. Neither one blinked when he joined them, Teddy shuffling over to make room.</p>
<p>“Welcome home. Do anything you need plausible deniability for?” Teddy’s grin was a familiar and comforting thing nowadays. There’d been a time when his plucky optimism had driven Tommy absolutely batshit insane, but things changed.</p>
<p>“No alibis required, sadly.”</p>
<p>Billy made a face at him from halfway through a hamstring stretch. “You’re losing your touch.”</p>
<p>“I’ve gotta practice being a responsible adult, don’t I?” Tommy tossed his jacket over the back of the desk chair and flopped down on the now-empty side of Billy and Teddy’s bed. “Now that Carol’s saddling me with a bunch of cadets. What the hell is she thinking?”</p>
<p>“That it’s a great way to thin the herd?” Billy suggested, and smacked away the pillow that Tommy grabbed to swat him with.</p>
<p>“What the hell do I even <em>do</em> with them for six weeks? Don’t trainers have to take a course in training people, or something? They sure as hell aren’t practicing in Magnus,” Tommy grumbled. “Even before she’s taken apart. She doesn’t like strangers.”</p>
<p>Propped up on his elbows, Teddy frowned in thought. “There’s got to be a curriculum somewhere. The PPDC is in love with procedures and manuals for everything. Try checking the base intranet.”</p>
<p>“I’d suggest asking Kate to call Clint – he’s still teaching at the Academy – but, uh. What’s the status there?” Billy asked, all innocence. He sat up, untangling himself from the stretch band and dropping it on the floor. “That looked like an intense conversation you were having tonight.”</p>
<p>“Followed by the solo drive?” Teddy nodded along, double-teaming Tommy. One nosy jerk on each side of him, and no easy escape route. Damn. “That’s a sign that something’s up.”</p>
<p>“Nothing’s up, we’re just not fucking anymore. My choice,” Tommy said firmly, directing that at Billy. “So don’t give her any grief. <em>Or </em>Chavez. I’m just over it.”</p>
<p>Teddy hummed something that sounded like an affirmation, but Tommy could feel his look of concern burning into the back of Tommy’s neck.</p>
<p>Billy sent a glance over Tommy’s shoulder, about where he figured Teddy was visible, but just shrugged instead of calling Tommy out on it. “So what are you going to do now that you’re officially single?”</p>
<p>“I was never <em>not</em> single. I was an occasional hookup for a woman in a semi-open relationship. And I’m going to do whatever the hell I want.” So there.</p>
<p>“Ah, I see we’re choosing ‘denial’ as our escape route tonight. Excellent selection, sir. Would you care for the wine menu?” Teddy’s sarcasm was light and dry, a lot less pointy than Billy’s version would have been, but there wasn’t an open wound for either of them to get an edge into. No matter how much they poked.</p>
<p>“Fuck off,” Tommy said instead, not putting any heat into the words. “The next time we drift you’ll know exactly how wrong you both are. <em>And </em>since you’re so incredibly interested in my future plans, I can count on your help with the cadets. Right?” he turned his head from one to the other, staring down his favourite pair of dumbasses until one of them cracked. “<em>Right</em>?”</p>
<p>Teddy broke first, his shoulders settling with a heaved sigh and a knowing grin. “All for one,” he joked. “I’ll look up the procedures for you, but I’m not writing reports.”</p>
<p>Billy snorted a laugh and shook his head, but it was followed by a roll of his eyes and a concession. “Yeah, yeah. Like I’d leave you out to dry. Not completely, anyway,” he amended after Tommy’s incredulous stare. He held out his closed fist for Tommy to bump it. “One for all.”</p>
<p>“I knew I could count on you.” Tommy let himself fall backwards again, hands behind his head. Billy’s new poster of Magnus Echo was taped to the wall, the vivid green of her hull chased with fresh racing stripes in red and blue. She watched over the three of them, and they took care of each other. He was as content now as he’d ever been, all (most) of the parts of his life slotted neatly into place.</p>
<p>Boredom aside, what right did he have to ask for more?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He could have used the next day to go over the cadet files properly, or at least done more than just looking at names and checking disciplinary records. He didn’t.</p><p>On the day the cadets were supposed to arrive, Tommy still didn’t have a solid plan in place. Some ideas, sure, a couple of which Danvers hadn’t actively vetoed. As for the rest… he’d have to wing it. In the meantime, Tommy stalked the halls of the Shatterdome, restless energy churning through his legs and eating him up inside.</p><p>Kate and Eli had taken over the weight room, and he ducked down a corridor to miss running into America on her way to the simulators. He took the long way around to avoid the elevator up to LOCCENT. (Why? No reason, only the thought of going up there today annoyed him.) That path brought Tommy to J-tech’s wing before he realized where his avoidance had led him. It would do.</p><p>Kitty would be around here somewhere, and Doug, his pit crew chiefs deep in the planning stages for the big dissection. Checking on the plans for Magnus’ refit was work-related and gave him an excuse for not submitting Psych review forms in triplicate, or whatever the fuck the PPDC thought they needed. He wouldn’t know anything about the cadets until he met them, anyway. It didn’t matter how many records he compiled. People couldn’t be boiled down to proficiency ratings and brain wave charts.</p><p>J-tech was more of a mess than usual, the huge hangar off the side of the Jaeger bays filled with more parts and immense scaffolded structures than belonged in one place. An older man in civvies was puttering around a system that looked like a new simulator setup, pons sets dangling from wires in the middle of a half-assembled VR booth.</p><p>Tommy’s feet started tugging him in that direction, but he only made it a few steps before a much more appealing distraction presented itself. “Yo, Maximoff!”</p><p>“S’up, Lewis?” He turned to greet her, a smile already cresting on his face. In the four months since Dr. Jane Foster’s team had been at the Shatterdome she’d become his favourite of the interlopers, even if he still only had the vaguest of ideas about what her role actually was. Project manager? Paperwork genius? Making sure the brain trust was kept fed and watered at regular intervals? It seemed to be parts of all the above.</p><p>Whatever she’d been hired for still allowed her to wander around the base in civilian clothes, which he took a second to appreciate. There was nothing overtly sensual about her jeans and PPDC t-shirt, but the curves that filled them out were another story. Her dark waves were shoved up into a messy bun today, and she carried a clipboard and a data pad under her arm.</p><p>There’d been a spark of something there since the first day she’d shown up on base, but he’d been too wrapped up in Billy’s stupid dramas and the whole <em>thing</em> with Kate to give it — or her — enough attention. Didn’t matter now, did it?</p><p>“Looking good, short-stack,” he teased her, tucking his hands in the pockets of his dark blue BDUs. He and Billy weren’t tall, 5’9” on good days. Kate just about came up to his forehead. America looked him in the eye, David a couple of inches taller again — but even in her thick-soled boots Darcy was half a foot shorter than him. Right now that was even more appealing.</p><p>She stopped at his side, tilting her head up to look at him. Green eyes sparkled behind the rims of her funky glasses and she returned his grin. “Come to check on some of our sweet, sweet new tech? Hands off, Eagle One. Strictly card-carrying members of the refit team only.”</p><p>Tommy pressed his hand to his heart, happily drawn in to the refreshingly easy give-and-take. Away from all the drama of the rangers’ barracks, he could just… be. “Aw, Darcy. No exceptions? Not even for me?”</p><p>Darcy shook her head, the pencil tucked into her hair bouncing with the movement and her laugh. “Not even for your cute little behind.” Tommy put on a pout, batting his eyelashes, and after a beat Darcy rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine, as long as you stop making that stupid face. I can catch you up on the news, but no touchy. Dr. Selvig’s really particular about his setups.”</p><p>Erik Selvig, that was the guy, the balding white dude currently fussing over a pair of feedback cradles in his half-enclosed room on the hangar floor. Tommy watched for a moment. “What’s he building?”</p><p>“A new drift simulator. It’s based on some of the quantum modifications that Dr. Richards and Pryde and Chief Alleyne developed when you guys had to pull Other Maximoff out of Magnus Echo’s systems last year.” Darcy’s eyes lit up as she was speaking, clipboard tucked under her arm to free up her hands. “It’s cool stuff, supposed to be able to let anyone drift with anyone.”</p><p>Tommy felt the physical and mental recoil of disgust hit him all at once, and the look he turned on Darcy couldn’t possibly be conveying the depth of his skepticism. “That’s gonna crash and burn,” he snorted. “All power to Selvig and quantum physics, but drift compatibility’s a thing that fancy technology can’t replicate.”</p><p>“We shall see, my disbelieving friend, we shall see.”</p><p>He nodded toward the pad under her arm, too much thinking about the implications of Selvig’s experiment making his stomach turn. “Speaking of cool stuff, I’m assuming that the plans for Magnus are all approved by now. What are we getting? How much of the stuff from that list the Marshal made us fill out?”</p><p>He definitely wasn’t imagining the look of total exasperation that crossed Darcy’s face then, Selvig and his bullshit simulator entirely forgotten.</p><p>“Yeahhhhh… about that.” She pulled out the data pad and flicked the screen on, tapping quickly to bring up checklists that looked vaguely familiar. “According to this, Ranger Altman tried to requisition elbow rockets, rocket fists and rocket <em>feet</em>- you guys know that physics and weight-to-thrust ratios actually exist in the real world, right? Other Maximoff wrote in ‘chicken cannon,’ then scratched it out and replaced it with ‘chest rockets with thermonuclear warheads on them,’ and you asked for a chain sword.” Darcy looked up at him, her <em>what the fuck</em> implied rather than said aloud. “You already <em>have</em> a chain sword.”</p><p>“But not one that we can set on <em>fire</em>. You missed the important part.”</p><p>“So since none of you took it seriously-”</p><p>“I was one hundred percent serious about the fire sword.”</p><p>“You’re getting what we think is cool.” She waved her hand through the holographic display and a new cockpit formed in the space above the pad, blue lines cutting through the red edges of the current layout. “Most importantly, getting rid of those clunky old rigs. These new cockpits can read pilots’ movements in a full 360 surround and translate them directly to the Jaeger.”</p><p>Tommy walked around the projection, a frown creasing his forehead. “Sensors instead of direct connection? There’s going to be one hell of a lag to compensate for.” That meant retraining, re-learning everything they’d practiced over years of living and breathing in tune to Magnus’s immediate responses.</p><p>“Au contraire, oh skeptical one. And here I thought you were the creative thinker on your team.” He looked up sharply but she was teasing him, her eyes alight. “It’s a combination. You’ll still use the circuit suits and drivesuits with the old-school feedback cradles, but with the new tech doing more of the heavy lifting. It’s like the Kinect game systems from when we were kids. Did you ever have one of those?”</p><p>Tommy shook his head. “Nah. Our folks weren’t so into video games. But I know which one you mean,” he added quickly, just in case she was about to explain it.</p><p>Darcy swiped through the projection again and it changed, Magnus’ cockpit design turning and adding the figures of two pilots in the spaces where the old rigs had been. They were still connected through the helmets and conduits that came up for the hands, but the heavy boot-straps were gone. “It’s like that. The sensor web reads your movements and translates them into data for the Jaeger’s on-board AI. We get immediate response, and moving is a lot easier on the body than hauling those massive pistons around.”</p><p>He seized the opening with undisguised relish, that flash of something moodier vanishing with his bursting smile. “You don’t like massive pistons?”</p><p>Darcy rolled her eyes and turned off the data pad, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “If I had a buck for every time some guy thought he was making a funny dick joke, I could fund my own Jaeger program and staff it only with women.” She faced him down, chin tilted up, but she hadn’t hit him with anything yet.</p><p>Unabashed, Tommy tucked his hands in his pants pockets and grinned at her. “Some people actually find me charming, you know.”</p><p>Darcy snorted. “People without brain damage?”</p><p>That hit harder than he wanted it to. “Ouch.” He winced, couldn’t help it, and wasn’t able to turn it into a joke that would prove he didn’t actually care.</p><p>Darcy’s combat stance faded away and she bit her lip. “Nah, I’m kidding — sometimes things don’t sound as mean in my head as they do when they come out, you know?”</p><p>It wasn’t exactly an apology but it was as good as, and Tommy accepted it with a nod. “Yeah, been there. Words are hard.” And because she was new and uncomplicated, no history there other than friendly teasing and a hefty dose of attraction, he kept talking. “If you really want to make me feel better, how about drinks sometime?”</p><p>That sounded like a great plan; honest to God, his mouth came up with better ideas than his brain most of the time. Darcy looked him up and down, her eyes catching on his chest for maybe a beat longer than she might have intended to. And she nodded, slowly, like she was considering her options. “Sure. What the hell.”</p><p><em>Tonight,</em> he was about to ask, when his phone went in his pocket. Internal communication, the buzz pattern that meant Wendy, Marshal Danvers’ attaché. “Hang on a sec.” He pulled it out and glanced over the text message, his heart sinking. So much for drinks.</p><p>
  <em>Cadets inbound. Report to helipad, stat. </em>
</p><p>“Dammit,” Tommy sighed aloud. “Duty calls. I’m babysitting.”</p><p>Darcy craned her neck to see the message and the confirmation reply that he quickly jabbed out with his thumbs before putting his phone away. “Welcome to my world,” she sighed, patting him on the shoulder. Her hand lingered a little when she was done, and he resisted the urge to lean in like a dog being scratched. “At least yours have been trained to follow orders. Mine are like herding cats.”</p><p>“Trade you,” he offered, but she shook her head with a laugh.</p><p>“Not a chance.”</p><p>Tommy might joke about being the bad influence, but he kept his order-breaking to things that were either a lot less or a lot more important than this. Time to go report in. He started off toward the door, pausing only when he heard Darcy’s cheery call. “Have fun, hot teacher.”</p><p>He paused only long enough to kiss the tip of his middle finger and flip her the bird. Her laugh followed him out the door, his step a lot lighter than it had been on the way in.</p>
<hr/><p>The helicopter engine and the thwock-thwock of the spinning blades made it difficult for the passengers to talk, but the six cadets packed like sardines into the small aircraft did the best they could.</p><p>“Can you see the Shatterdome? How about the launch bays?”</p><p>“If Zack would get his <em>elbow</em> out of my<em> ribcage</em> I might be able to get a better look.”</p><p>“You guys are acting like you’ve never seen a PPDC base before. We’ve been training at one for months.”</p><p>“This is different, Jason. This could be the chance for us to do something more than the simulators.”</p><p>“You’re nuts if you think they’re letting any of us pilot their Jaegers.”</p><p>“Technically, seeing as we are part of the PPDC, the Strike Team’s Jaegers are also<em> our</em> Jaegers. Unless you mean ‘they’ as in the current piloting teams, and you’re suggesting that they have some kind of veto rights over Defense Corps administration. In which case we’re definitely not getting in.”</p><p>“Holy shit. That’s Tom Maximoff.”</p><p>Kim’s reverent exclamation came at the same time the helo banked, turning around the landing pad below to begin a slower vertical approach. Zack’s nose was pressed against the glass while Trini sat with her arms folded in the seat next to his pretending not to be impressed. But even she pushed herself up for a second to try and see over Jason’s shoulder.</p><p>“From Magnus Echo? That Jaeger’s got the highest kill-count on the west coast of the United States. It stands two hundred and sixty feet tall and weighs two thousand tonnes. It’s currently wielding a chain sword and an I-19 Plasmacaster pulse cannon, though the model is older and considerably less versatile than the Mark IVs currently in preliminary design stages.”</p><p>“She, Billy. Vehicles are always referred to as she. Even Jaegers.”</p><p>Down on the helipad, the famous ranger was leaning against the wall of what looked like a sheltered stairwell down into the Shatterdome. He was scanning a datapad in his hand, his white hair tumbling in the wind kicked up by the helicopter’s approach.</p><p>“Is that his real hair colour, d’you think?” Kim mused aloud.</p><p>Zack snickered. “I know one way you could find out.”</p><p>“Don’t be gross. Plus, he’s a ranger and we’re cadets. That would be a whole boatload of ‘bad idea.’”</p><p>“It’s totally not natural,” Trini drawled, back in her seat with her knees propped up against the back of the seat in front of her. “His twin’s got dark hair. Tommie should know. She’s watched every. single. interview. those guys have ever given.”</p><p>“Not <em>every</em> one. And there’s nothing wrong with doing research.”</p><p>“Shut up, guys, and try to look professional. We’re landing.”</p>
<hr/><p>Tommy shielded his eyes from the dust kicked up by the helicopter blades, arm up against the wind-borne onslaught. The cadets were barely off and standing with their kit bags on the landing pad before the pilot was giving him a cheerful wave and lifting off again, leaving Tommy alone with the six wanna-be rangers that Danvers had inexplicably assigned to his tender mercies.</p><p>They made an eclectic group, but had Tommy, Billy, Scott and Cass been any less ridiculous as incoming cadets? And these kids didn’t even have the security of drift partners to have their backs. Not yet. Supposedly their EEGs had suggested they all had the latent potential to be drift compatible, but Tommy and Teddy had been living proof that ‘latent potential’ meant jack shit when it intersected with the real world.</p><p>“Cadets. Welcome to the Shatterdome.”</p><p>“Sir!”</p><p>If he had to pair them up on first impressions, watching them tumble off the helicopter, organize their gear and assemble into something resembling parade rest…</p><p>Kim Hart and Trini Kwan — they’d be a new America-and-Kate, the tall one watchful, and the little one narrowing her eyes at him in suspicion and amusement. Fabulous.</p><p>Jason Scott was going to be a challenge. He had his chin up and was staring Tommy straight in the eye, no fucks given. Not hard, considering he probably had Tommy’s height beat by a good few inches. The Maximoff twins topped out around 5’9”. Small but mighty. Maybe pair him off with Billy Cranston, who was looking around like he was overwhelmed, or maybe nervous. But he stuck close to Scott’s side like there was already a protector bond there.</p><p>And as for the other two… Zack Taylor had a grin on his face that was incredibly familiar, and that meant trouble, but a kind of trouble Tommy was used to. The sixth in their group was tall, her brown hair down around her shoulders, and legs for days. Tommy glanced down at the data pad again to get the names right — Cadet Oliver’s name was...</p><p>“A Tommie and a Billy?” Tommy groaned aloud, tucking the data pad into the thigh pocket of his BDUs. “Seriously? Because that’s not going to be confusing at all.” Cranston wouldn’t meet his eye, so he glanced at Oliver instead. “Can’t you go by something else while you’re assigned to me? Will and I have seniority here.”</p><p>He was mostly joking, a sharp grin pulling at one corner of his mouth.</p><p>Oliver caught his gaze though, caught and held it even as Scott started to object. “I chose <em>this</em> name,” she said clearly. It all clicked into place with that, the connection that was probably somewhere in her file if he’d actually bothered to read the entire thing. “Not another one.”</p><p>Tommy conceded the point with an easy nod. “Fair. In that case, you can all call me the Grand High Poobah, Master of your Fates. Or Ranger Maximoff, Sir. I’ll answer to both, just be careful with that last one because there’s two of us.”</p><p>He didn’t miss the glimmer of a smile on Oliver’s face before Tommy gestured to the group and cranked open the stairwell door. “Grab your kit and fall in. You’ll get squared away first and then get the grand tour. At least the parts you have clearances for.” Not looking back to see if any of them were obeying, Tommy dropped down the stairs two at a time. It wasn’t showing off how well he knew the turf, as much as it was… making sure he wasn’t holding up traffic on the stairs.</p><p>He was absolutely the wrong person to be given the job of training his eventual replacements.</p><p>Or worse – Scott and Cassie Lang’s replacements. Stinger Goliath’s bay in the Shatterdome proper was still empty, a monument to everyone’s grief. They could use the backup of a fourth Jaeger, sure. But not at the cost of forgetting.</p><p>The rattle and clunk behind him snapped Tommy’s wandering mind back to the moment and he gave a quarter-turn, watching out of the corner of his eye as the cadets followed him. Scott was in the lead, cementing Tommy’s impression. <em>Alpha male type.</em> <em>Annoying, but ultimately out to impress.</em> He could work with that.</p><p>It was Hart who started in on the questions, though. She pulled up beside him, her bag looped easily over one shoulder. Her brown hair had been scraped back in a regulation bun and looked unhappy about it, but her dark brown eyes shone. “Will we be working with Ranger Maximoff? The other Ranger Maximoff,” she amended quickly. “And Ranger Altman, isn’t it? You have a second co-pilot? That was the gossip everywhere at the Academy, that the three of you are drifting together now.”</p><p>“That’s us,” Tommy confirmed. “Smashing the records and redefining the possible.” The comment came out maybe more snidely than he meant it, but the snark was aimed at the J-tech geeks in general, not her. What was wrong with letting good things just exist, without taking them apart to figure out why they ticked? What he’d forged with Billy and Teddy wasn’t for public consumption, and it definitely wasn’t there to be some kind of aspirational example.</p><p>“Is that why we’re ‘assigned to you’?” Kwan came up on his other side, a compact, golden-skinned package with braids holding her hair tight against the sides of her head. “To learn how you pulled off a three-way drift?”</p><p>Tommy slowed his stride to let the gawkers at the rear catch up to the group. “I pulled the short straw because Magnus is going in for a refit in a week,” he said bluntly, and felt a pang of guilt when Hart’s face fell. Kwan didn’t seem to care, her gaze sharp. He drew in, then puffed out, a breath. “It’s difficult enough to find two people who are a match, Cadet. Drift compatibility is rare as hell, and once you take away every pair with someone who isn’t fit enough to pilot, too young, too old – the numbers get <em>really</em> damn low.</p><p>“I wouldn’t get your hopes up about finding another group of three any time soon. Each pair in the triad has to be able to synchronize on their own, and that’s three relationships to balance instead of one. And all of them have to be strong enough to hold under the worst stress you’ve ever experienced in your life.”</p><p>They were all listening now, some more attentively than others. Kwan picked up the thread of the question again. “Okay, so, twins — that one’s obvious. And Ranger Altman was brought in as a replacement while your brother was on medical leave.” That was one way to put it. “That was a computer match based on brain scans, right? Is that why he’s compatible with your brother too, because twin brains are so similar?”</p><p>Tommy shot her a sharp look. She was treading on dangerous territory and didn’t seem to care. “It’s not about anything physical. EEGs don’t mean squat, no matter what the geeks tell you. It’s about trust, not about brain chemicals matching up.”  </p><p>It was Oliver who spoke next, her low, warm voice a calm contrast to Kwan’s intensity. “So what <em>is</em> it that makes Ranger Altman compatible with the other Ranger Maximoff?”</p><p>Yeah, he’d had about enough of this conversation. “Altman’s dick. Next topic?” Tommy started walking, leading his little row of overly-inquisitive ducklings toward the barracks room that had been set up for them. It was too close to J-tech and the refit bays for his liking, but he wasn’t the one who’d have to try and sleep there.</p><p>He ignored the rumblings of questions behind him, though snatches of phrases still carried through.</p><p>“Did he just say-”</p><p>“- guess it’s true that no-one cares about fraternizing-”</p><p>“- like a third of piloting pairs are couples-”</p><p>“Don’t even think it, Taylor.”</p><p>“Didn’t cross my mind for a second, crazy girl.”</p><p>That guy Selvig passed them in the hall, heading in the opposite direction. Tommy nodded a vague greeting and moved aside so he didn’t get hit with the big toolbox Selvig was lugging along behind him. Whoever had decided to berth the cadets so close to the refit work wasn’t doing them any favours; it’d be loud while the teams were busy taking Magnus apart.</p><p>Jason Scott fell in step with Tommy after that, pulling ahead of the rest of the pack. “Will we be meeting Marshal Danvers any time soon?”</p><p>“The Marshal’s a busy woman.” Tommy shrugged one shoulder. “But she likes to keep an eye on her base. I’m sure she’ll swing by eventually.” Probably right when Tommy was making a mess of things, but that was life for you.</p><p>He stopped walking at the door to the new cadet barracks and pushed his hand against the scanner. It blooped at him obligingly and the door slid open, revealing the long room with its rows of bunk beds and tall, narrow lockers. “Ten minutes to fight over beds and get your kit squared away, then change for a workout. First stop on the tour is the kwoon, so we can see what Alaska’s been teaching you guys.”</p><p>Once they were inside, Tommy paused and fished his phone out of his other pocket. He tapped out a quick message to his co-pilots, avoiding his usual spray of emojis so they could tell he was serious.</p><p>
  <strong>Tommy: I’m outnumbered and you promised to help. Kwoon in ten. PLZ.</strong>
</p><p>The bickering was already sounding through the door by the time he put his phone away. Muffled, thanks to the steel between him and them, but there.</p><p>Six weeks? If the PPDC wanted solid piloting teams to come out of those kids, it was going to take longer than that. And maybe a minor miracle.</p><p>
  <strong>Billy: Already here.</strong>
</p><p>At least there were some people he could always count on. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The cadets are based on the 2017 movie version of Saban's Power Rangers, except for Tommie, who's a mix of the 1993-1996 TV show and some unused movie ideas.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Wherein Tommy gets to give the cadets grief, and there's movement in the Breach.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A few days in, and Tommy was starting to get the hang of being a teacher. All he had to do was steer them around from one checkup to another and tell stories about kaiju fights. Done and done. No-one had complained about anything to his face yet, anyway. Carol’d stopped him on his way down to the mess hall for breakfast and asked about the cadets, a gleam of amusement in her eye. The gleam and grin only got brighter when he made a token attempt at complaining.</p>
<p>He sure as hell wasn’t ready to concede that things were going smoothly, but at least the cadets hadn’t mutinied. Yet. Much. Scott kept looking at him with that measuring-and-weighing look that could turn on a dime, trying to figure out Tommy’s weak spots.</p>
<p>Good thing he didn’t have any.</p>
<p>In the kwoon again now, part of the daily routine that every cadet lived by during training—and every Ranger kept up as a matter of literal life-or-death—Tommy leaned on his bō staff and watched while Josiah Bradley ran the kids through their paces. Uncle Joe had come to LA with Eli, a replacement team after Tommy and Billy had gotten their asses kicked and Magnus put out of commission. Tommy hadn’t reacted all that well. To any of it.</p>
<p>Tommy and Eli had eventually settled into a respectful sort of détente, but Uncle Joe was pretty alright. His outwardly unflappable calm was one hell of an asset when it came to getting the cadets to snap to attention.</p>
<p><em>And now the replacements were training more replacements, potentially to fill the gaping hole left by the Stinger Goliath and the Langs-</em> Tommy’s mind shut down that train of thought before it got any further. No-one could replace Cassie and Scott Lang. Not even the kid who shared part of his name.</p>
<p>Speaking of which… over on the mats, Uncle Joe was running the cadets through a new series of exercises. Taylor was fucking around, more interested in impressing Kwan than the lesson, while she was ignoring him so pointedly that Tommy almost felt sorry for the guy. Cranston, on the other hand, was so focused on what Joe was showing them that he seemed totally oblivious to the rest of the world. Joe broke them out into pairs, and Tommy settled in to watch the show.</p>
<p>It was immediately obvious that Scott and Oliver were the ones who’d caught on fastest, but they were going at the fight like they were expecting actual blood to get drawn. Scott was fast but Oliver was faster, getting in under his defenses and claiming two hits before he could get a bead on her.</p>
<p>“Reminds me of someone, don’t you think?” Teddy, the big lunkhead, joined Tommy on the sidelines and rested his elbow on Tommy’s shoulder. Tommy didn’t shrug him off, even though he was sweaty.</p>
<p>“Sure, with maybe half the speed and even less style,” Tommy snorted. They watched for a moment longer as Oliver laid Scott flat on the second practice mat. The other cadets fell quiet; something was buzzing in an undercurrent that Tommy hadn’t picked up on before.</p>
<p>Oliver stood, bowed like etiquette and protocol demanded, and extended her hand to him. The moment hung in the air—a beat, two. Then Scott took her hand and let her help him to his feet. The tension faded away, quickly enough that Tommy wasn’t entirely sure he’d picked up on something real at all.</p>
<p>“They’re not bad,” Billy said from Tommy’s other side, leaning more heavily on his staff than he probably wanted anyone to notice. His knees had been bothering him more since the winter started, the cool, damp air off the ocean doing something to stiffen the worn-out joints. The black knee braces were the last visible remnants of his injuries, now that he’d put more muscle on to replace everything he’d lost while on life support. The twins were back to looking alike instead of before-and-after photos, except for the bleach. Tommy was a lot more careful about root touch-ups now that it mattered again.</p>
<p>Billy raised a dark eyebrow at him, and Tommy shrugged his judgement. “They’re okay, for cadets. They’d get their asses handed to them in any kind of actual fight.”</p>
<p>“Tell us how you really feel.” Teddy huffed a soft laugh.</p>
<p>“Please do.”</p>
<p>Tommy snapped his head up at the new voice joining the conversation. Jason Scott stood on the mat, barefoot and his black tank top sticking to his sweaty chest. He had his staff in his hand, one end nonchalantly planted on the mat, and he had that look in his eye again, the one Tommy had been getting from him daily. A challenge. “You have something to say, cadet?” Tommy drawled after a moment, making sure he paused just long enough that it was obvious he wasn’t bothered.</p>
<p>Billy let out a faint hiss of breath next to him. “You sound like grand-dad,” he murmured.</p>
<p>A chill ran down Tommy’s spine at the thought. “Shut the fuck up,” he murmured right back.</p>
<p>Jason replied, “Yes, sir.” The other cadets were watching now, their chatter stopped. Tommie Oliver, dressed the same except for her hair in a bun, waited a few steps behind and to Jason’s right, hands in her pants pockets and gaze intent on both men.</p>
<p>“All you’ve been doing for the last three days is sending us from one duty station to another. Take this test, try that simulator- and it’s all things we’ve been doing at the Academy for months already. So I’d like to know, Ranger Maximoff, <em>sir</em>. How <em>are </em>we doing? And if you don’t think we’re good enough to start training as Rangers for real, then why are we here?”</p>
<p>The sarcastic hit on the honorific was enough to send Eli’s lips twitching on the other side of the kwoon, thankfully far enough behind enemy lines that the cadets wouldn’t see him snicker. Tommy ignored him.</p>
<p>“You’re here because, for some ungodly reason, the PPDC thinks that we’ve figured out a magic way to turn six solo cadets into three synch-capable piloting teams.” Tommy shrugged. “I think they’re full of shit.”</p>
<p>“Nice,” Teddy said dryly. “Very encouraging.”</p>
<p>Tommy shot him a glare. Traitor. “You want to be encouraging? Go for it. I prefer realism.”  </p>
<p>Teddy took the bait. He snagged Tommy’s bō out of his hand and paced slowly toward the mat. “Contrary to what sour-pants over there is saying, you’re not bad individually.”</p>
<p>“But?” Tommie asked, all the tension still sitting hard across her shoulders and arms.</p>
<p>“But you’re not working together.”</p>
<p>Scott’s brow furrowed. “It’s a fight,” he explained, as though Teddy were the know-nothing cadet instead of a Ranger with two kills to his name. “The point is to win.”</p>
<p>Teddy shook his head. “You’re trying to be the best. There’s nothing wrong with that, unless you actually want to have a copilot. You were so focused on kicking Oliver’s butt that you forgot to actually tune in to her.”</p>
<p>Teddy snapped his bō into position and Scott immediately followed suit, but he wasn’t Teddy’s target. Teddy whipped around, barely looking, and struck at the spot where Tommy stood.</p>
<p>He wasn’t there anymore, of course, hopping over the end of Teddy’s staff and clean away. Tommy dropped to one knee and rolled, Billy tossing him his staff before he was up on his feet again. It thudded into his hand, solid and sure, and Tommy aimed the end at the back of Teddy’s knees to try and take him down. This was a dance like always, the combination of moves different but the music the same.</p>
<p>Teddy dodged easily, his eyes laughing and a brilliant grin on his face as they sparred for a second, the rush of <em>knowing</em> as potent as it always had been when Tommy sparred with Billy. <em>There. I see you.</em> And there-</p>
<p>And Teddy would be right where he was supposed to be, ducking around and under Tommy’s attacks like they were in the middle of a drift already.</p>
<p>Tommy dropped his guard on purpose and Teddy levelled the end of his bō at Tommy’s forehead. He popped it forward half an inch to brush against his skin, and Tommy didn’t flinch. “Boop,” Teddy declared, the grin wide on his face.</p>
<p>Tommy pushed the staff end aside and snorted in mild derision as Teddy stood down. He heard a muffled snicker from behind him and flipped the bird at Billy without bothering to look. “If you’re all about being alpha dog, Cadet, forget it. You’re not going to go anywhere other than back to Alaska.”</p>
<p>Scott set his jaw and took a step toward Tommy and Teddy, and for a nanosecond Tommy had the sinking sensation that the kid was going to do something really stupid-</p>
<p>And he might have, if the internal comms hadn’t picked that exact moment to start blasting a full-on alert, complete with a siren and David’s voice over the speakers.</p>
<p>
  <em>“Movement in the Breach. Kaiju sign rising. All Rangers and pit crews report to duty stations.”</em>
</p>
<p>The mood in the kwoon changed again, practice forgotten. Eli and Joe grabbed for their boots as Billy, Teddy and Tommy jogged for the door. “Magnus is up. Papa Valentine’s on backup,” Billy reminded them gleefully, his eyes already alight. The same thrill pumped hot through Tommy’s blood, thrill and a hefty dose of panic that he was able to cut off before it took hold.</p>
<p>
  <em>Billy’s safe in LOCCENT. No matter what happens to us, Billy’s safe.</em>
</p>
<p>That was enough to make the terror subside, sink back to the pit in his stomach where it hibernated between bouts. “One more ride before she goes into drydock,” Tommy replied, grabbing Billy’s hand for a beat. “Let’s put on a show.” Billy squeezed his hand tight, his excited grin a perfect mirror of Tommy’s.  </p>
<p>“Kaiju, seriously?”</p>
<p>“Where do we go?”</p>
<p>“Do you think they’ll let us see the fight?”</p>
<p>… Cadets. Right. Tommy stopped in the doorway and looked back over his shoulder at the cluster of teenagers trailing after him. “Go to LOCCENT,” he suggested impulsively. “As long as you don’t touch anything, Alleyne might let you watch from there.”</p>
<p>“David’s going to murder you for that,” Teddy laughed, the flashing red alert lights in the corridor punctuating his words.</p>
<p>“Let him suffer for a change,” Tommy fired back, not entirely meaning it.</p>
<p>This was the moment where they had to head in different directions, Billy to the right and off to LOCCENT to plug himself in to the connection, Teddy and Tommy to the left and down to the drivesuit room to armour up.</p>
<p>Billy grabbed Tommy and flung his arms around his brother, squeezing Tommy tight. Once upon a time Tommy would have bitched about it, pushed him away or moaned about the hug being too confining. Now he hugged Billy back, a brief, hard squeeze that said more than words ever could. After a beat it really did become too much, and Tommy disentangled himself. They wouldn’t need words at all in a few minutes.</p>
<p>Teddy and Billy next, and a lip-lock passionate enough that Tommy felt the need to roll his eyes and look away. “I don’t need to see this crap,” he grumbled good-naturedly. Whatever; they’d earned the right. Didn’t mean he wasn’t allowed to give them shit. That was what brothers were for.</p>
<p>“Come back in one piece,” he heard Billy murmur.</p>
<p>“Promise.”</p>
<p>“You’d better.”</p>
<p>Tommy gave them a couple more seconds, feeling the presence of eyes boring into the back of his neck. He turned to see the cadets in the hall, more than one watching the intimate moment instead of having the decency to give them even the illusion of privacy. He raised an eyebrow at them, but only Hart had the grace to look embarrassed. Tommy turned away.</p>
<p>The guys were done sucking face, and Tommy held out his fist for Billy to bump it. “Catch you on the flip side,” Tommy said, and Billy nodded.</p>
<p>“Don’t leave me waiting too long,” he said, at a volume meant only for Tommy—and Teddy, next to him.</p>
<p>A faint chill ran down Tommy’s spine for the second time that afternoon. He made a face to push away the words and the memories that came with them. “Not a chance, dipshit.”</p>
<p>They didn’t have time after that to continue the harassment, the Shatterdome alerted and mobilizing for the possible fight to come. Billy turned and jogged down the hall, the cadets straggling after him one by one.</p>
<p>“Come on, partner,” Teddy laid his hand on Tommy’s shoulder in silent encouragement to get him moving. “I’ve got a third kill marker to earn.”</p>
<p>Tommy shook off the reluctance that had swept through him, and he broke into a jog himself. “Three for you makes nine for me, assuming the damned thing doesn’t make a break for Alaska or Hong Kong. One day I’m gonna have to thank Billy for taking some time off,” he joked, adrenaline making all his edges sharp. “Him splitting Magnus’s win count with you means I’ll always be alpha dog around this place.”</p>
<p>“Don’t get cocky,” Teddy warned, his grin only slipping for a second. “Anything could happen out there.”</p>
<p>“We’re going to kick its ass, that’s what’s going to happen out there. It’s not ‘cocky’ if we’re actually the best.” And that, thanks very much, was the right kind of attitude to ride into battle with. Forget weird shivers and bad memories; it was time for ‘hail the conquering heroes.’</p><hr/>
<p>Shoving himself into the circuit suit wasn’t exactly the highlight of his day physically, but the familiar click-thunk and the reassuring weight of the drivesuit closing around him made up for the indignity of hauling a pile of wire-laden spandex and rubber over his naked ass. Kitty pressed the feedback cradle into place and everything became lighter, his nerves bound in to the suit and the suit part of his skin.</p>
<p>The AI’s familiar voice went through the protocols, so routine by now that he barely noticed.</p>
<p>
  <em>Data on helmet. Data relay gel dispersing in circuitry suit.</em>
</p>
<p>His helmet smelled syrup-sweet, the yellow gel sliding through the circuitry, the vector that bound his blood to Magnus’s. Made him part of something so much bigger than himself. Brought him home. </p>
<p>It was a stupid, romanticised image, but he carried it with him in one of the little pockets of his brain that Teddy and Billy couldn’t get into. They blocked off some pieces of themselves, parts of their relationship that he didn’t need to see; in return he had a few spaces, some things that were just for him. The bond worked just fine now, even with those little spaces of privacy walled off from one another. The trust they’d built—Tommy and his brothers, his <em>family</em>—was more than enough to compensate.</p>
<p>Tommy was confident and all but strutting as he and Teddy made their way down the catwalk to Magnus Echo’s conn-pod, their boots clanking on the metal in perfect time. Movement across the gap caught Tommy’s eye. A small crowd had gathered on the catwalk across from Magnus, some of the scientists and engineers gathering to watch the deployment. Darcy stood at the front, hands resting on the railing, at least until she saw that he’d turned to look. The height difference would make it obvious that he wasn’t Teddy, and so Tommy happily assumed that her grin and her salute were for him and him alone.</p>
<p>He returned it, a cheeky wave before he stepped inside Magnus’s conn-pod and everything else faded from importance. He’d been born in this room, in a certain sense. Born here, died here, and then Teddy and Billy had brought him back to life in here as well. Tommy trailed his fingers along one of the control panels on the inner wall. Was this the last time he’d see her like this, every bolt and seam as familiar as his own skin?</p>
<p>Part of him was still vehemently rebelling against the thought. The rest was ready to strap in and go kick some ass, prove that even if her tech might be older, Magnus was still the best.</p>
<p>Right hemisphere was his, and Teddy headed over to the left side to get bolted in. The techs did their thing, locking the pilots and their feedback cradles into the connection points for the Jaeger.</p>
<p>And that was the point where Tommy, reaching out to toggle the comm system on, realized that he was going to have to talk to David.</p>
<p>He hadn’t been <em>avoiding</em> the Chief LOCCENT officer since getting shot down, but he hadn’t exactly gone out of his way to hang out. Like, at all. Maybe David would be too busy making the cadets sit down and shut up to care that Tommy was the pilot on the other end of the channel.</p>
<p>“We’re loaded and ready, LOCCENT,” Tommy reported, the visual and audio channels swimming into crystal clarity on the heads-up display. He didn’t get a video feed to David but he didn’t exactly want one either. It was enough that David could see him right alongside the graphs of all his biometrics, from oxygen saturation to the beats-per-minute of his heart. Anyone in LOCCENT at the moment knew more about what was going on inside Tommy’s body than Tommy did. “Billy, what’s your status?”</p>
<p>“Ready for connection, as soon as Carol gives the word,” Billy’s voice reported over the channel, and Tommy felt rather than saw Teddy’s little sigh of relief.</p>
<p>“Afternoon, guys,” David’s voice cut in over the background noise, clear, crisp and professional. Just like always. “And thank you very much for the advanced warning about the peanut gallery,” he added dryly. “We’re a little cramped up here now but we’ll manage, thank you for asking.”</p>
<p>“Teaching is a group effort,” Tommy advised sagely, while Teddy tried to stifle a laugh. “The PPDC thanks you for doing your part for the cause.”</p>
<p>“The PPDC can-” David started to mutter, then his whole tone changed. Tommy could see it in his mind’s eye, David’s whole bearing shifting, growing taller and more commanding, and his voice going right along with it. “Marshal Danvers on deck.”</p>
<p>Tommy let go of the half-dozen rejoinders on the tip of his tongue and settled into the familiar rhythm, his heartbeat starting to drum loud in his chest again.</p>
<p>“What’s the word, Marshal?” Teddy asked from Tommy’s left side.</p>
<p>It was David who answered as the locking mechanisms disengaged and the vast machinery of the Jaeger Bay began to churn and grind, moving Magnus Echo toward the launch doors. “Current trajectory says it’s headed our way. The signal from the throat of the Breach suggests it’s a Category Two, projected size approximately 1,500 tons.”</p>
<p>“Aw,” Teddy cracked. “He’s just a little guy.” Billy’s snorted laugh from LOCCENT was cut off by the Marshal’s voice on the channel.</p>
<p>“Don’t get stupid on this one, kids. They’ve pulled surprises out of their asses before.”</p>
<p>Teddy and Tommy shared a look, and Tommy conceded. “Yes, Marshal. No getting stupid. Just getting good.”</p>
<p>“Stay focused out there,” she added, always needing the last word.</p>
<p>They landed in the ocean, Magnus still inert. She was nothing but a giant paperweight without them. The rest of it was rote, so much a part of Tommy’s being now that he could go through the steps in his sleep. David’s voice curled around him, feeding through the comm in his ear, warm life interweaving with the AI’s canned responses.</p>
<p>
  <em>Engage pilot-to-pilot protocol.</em>
</p>
<p>“Engaging now.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Pilot to-pilot connection protocol sequence. </em>
</p>
<p>“Magnus Echo and her pilots are ready and aligned. Prepare for neural handshake, on my mark.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Starting in 15 seconds.</em>
</p>
<p>Tommy closed his eyes as the countdown beat time towards one.</p>
<p>
  <em>Pilot-to-pilot connection protocol sequence. Neural handshake initiated.</em>
</p>
<p>The world vanished. The darkness behind his eyes cleared and he was falling, falling until the veil parted, the light filled the dark spaces, and the ground rushed up to meet him. His space resolved around him; driftspace, in the way only he ever saw it. Everyone had their own version, that was what they’d been taught. Everyone saw driftspace in a different way. This space that didn’t exist, the world that hovered in the space between atoms, between thoughts.</p>
<p>Tommy had an open road, the sky arcing clear above him, the grass green on either side, the path in front of him wide, flat and easy. He could start running here and never stop, never stumble. Billy saw stars and galaxies in his mind’s eye, always looking up and out, away to something bigger. Big enough to consume them all. Teddy’s version was newer, fresher, the smell of salt spray and the cool relief of the ocean around his feet.</p>
<p>The other two pieces rushed in to meet him now, a bare instant after the drift began. Billy was first, sliding into the connection now forged hard as steel. The stars burst into red supernovas in the sky, Billy’s thoughts and memories flooding through Tommy in a tidal wave. <em>Brother,</em> his heart sang, and Tommy opened himself to it.</p>
<p>
  <em> <span class="driftTommy">~Mine.~</span></em>
</p>
<p>Teddy followed, blue with the rush of the waves and the taste of the sea breeze, the steadfast sense-memory of ancient stone.</p>
<p><em>Brother,</em> his heart sang, and Tommy opened himself to it.</p>
<p>
  <em><span class="driftTommy">~Mine.~</span></em>
</p>
<p>
  <span class="driftBilly">~You sound like one of those seagulls from Finding Nemo.~</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span class="driftTommy">~Shut the fuck up.~</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span class="driftBilly">~Love you too.~</span>
</p>
<p>It would be so easy to sink into the drift, to stay there in the sensation of connection; to know—no words needed—exactly how loved he was. In-fucking-toxicating. In the distance he heard a voice that tugged at him, brought him back up to the surface just enough to hover on the edge of consciousness. David on the comms again. That was alright; he wasn’t an intruder. His voice was part of the experience, their north star in all the long, dark nights.</p>
<p>“Neural handshake strong and holding. Ninety-eight percent of maximum for Magnus, which puts them at around a hundred and four or five compared to everybody else.”</p>
<p>“Show-offs,” Eli grumbled from somewhere, likely Papa Valentine’s conn-pod. They wouldn’t deploy unless they were needed, unless Tommy fucked something up again.</p>
<p>
  <span class="driftTeddy">~You didn’t fuck anything up before.~</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span class="driftBilly">~We’ll take this bastard down before the Bradleys even have a chance to synch.~</span>
</p>
<p>Out loud, Tommy found his voice. “Right hemisphere is calibrating.” A few deep breaths and he had it, that tight mental <em>click</em> of Magnus’s controls sliding into place. Her readouts matched what he felt through every nerve and muscle as he breathed life into the machine.</p>
<p>Teddy followed him, the warm caress of his affection kept neatly within the drift. “Left hemisphere calibrating.”</p>
<p>“Tactical control calibrating,” Billy replied.</p>
<p><em>Proofed and transmitting</em>, declared Magnus’s AI. They were whole, the connection complete.</p>
<p>
  <span class="driftTommy">~Time to kick some ass.~</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Wherein a kaiju gets its ass kicked, and Tommy and Darcy get it on. Things are going super-duper well. Right?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Billy’s prediction had been prophetic. The kaiju they faced had been smaller than the last couple. Meaner, mind you, with a face like a porcupine that had seen some shit. Its ability to curl up and fire some kind of insanely sharp needles out of its back almost caught them off-guard, but David’s shout had let them roll out of the way and crash into the pounding surf with only a long score-mark across Magnus' right arm to show for the near-miss.</p><p>Some parts triumph, other parts anticlimactic—it wasn’t that he wanted to be in serious danger, but the fight had almost been over too soon. He vibrated with the leftover energy, the adrenaline spikes running hot over his skin through the step-down, disconnection from the drift, the debriefing-</p><p>Tommy was on a high, the kind that could only come from winning mixed with a huge dose of <em>fucked that asshole up real good.</em> He wasn’t the only one. Billy and Teddy had fucked off somewhere immediately after the debriefing to go use up some of that extra energy. Good for them, honestly. It left Tommy to hit the showers and find himself a party of his own. Dancing was a good idea. He needed to grab a gang, crash a club or six. He’d saved the city, after all. It owed him a good time tonight.</p><p>And speak of the devil… He rounded a corner as Darcy Lewis came down the hall. Her eyes lit up when she saw him and she picked up the pace as she drew closer, a broad smile growing on her lips. A guy could get used to that kind of welcome.</p><p>“Welcome back, hero,” she teased as they met in the middle of the hall. Tommy was acutely aware of his hair, wet from the shower and sticking up in odd directions, his t-shirt clinging to the dampness left on his skin. From the way Darcy was eyeballing his shoulders she was pretty aware of it too, but in a way that made him not mind the problem at all. “How does it feel to save the world?”</p><p>“I dunno,” Tommy grinned back, coming alive in the light from her eyes. “After the what… ninth time? It starts to feel routine.”</p><p>“Like you don’t know exactly how many kill markers you’ve got stitched on your jacket, hotshot,” she scoffed.</p><p>“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. What I do know is that I’m getting the hell off-base for the evening and you should absolutely come with me.” Acting on impulse—when did he do anything any other way?—Tommy reached out and grabbed for her hand. She let him take it and laughed as she spun under his arm, winding up snug against his side, her chin tipped up to look him in the eye.</p><p>“And what’s in it for me?” she asked, his arm snug against the small of her back and the way she was leaning into him, her breasts soft and full against his side—it was a question that was already part of its own answer.</p><p>“A night out with the man of the hour?” he offered, and she made a face at him. “My perpetual devotion.”</p><p>Darcy pretended to think about that for a second, untangling herself from his arm. “Hmm. But is it worth it?” she asked, tapping her chin in pretend concentration.</p><p>“Drinks are on me, final offer.”</p><p>“Done.” Darcy glanced at her phone, a handful of alerts already up on the screen. “Jane’s losing her shit over the damage you guys did to Magnus, so give me a chance to unruffle her feathers and I’m all yours.”</p><p>Tommy grinned. “Really? Promise?”</p><p>“One step at a time, hero,” Darcy grinned right back at him, and all he could see in his mind’s eye were those dark curls spread out beneath her in his bed, those eyes locked on him, her cheeks flushed. If she was thinking along the same lines, he was going to have the perfect end to what had already turned out to be a pretty damned good day. “I’ll meet you at the motor pool in half an hour.”</p><p>“It’s a date.” Tommy tossed off a half-assed salute and walked backward down the hall toward the Rangers’ quarters, keeping her in sight until she turned the corner and was gone.   </p><hr/><p>About thirty minutes later, give or take a few, Tommy had shaved, dressed, reconsidered his outfit a couple of times before deciding the skinny jeans and slim-cut t-shirt were the right call after all, and grabbed his leather jacket with Magnus Echo’s logo on the back before heading out to meet the gang.</p><p>It had evolved into a group thing after all. Billy and Teddy had reappeared, cheeks flushed and freshly showered, and then Teddy’d texted Kitty and <em>she’d</em> roped Doug into coming- by the time Tommy was on his way to find Darcy, there were probably a dozen people in on the text chain. He slowed his walk as he passed the hallway to the senior enlisted quarters. One name he hadn’t seen on the list as things zipped by had been David’s. Alleyne was as much a part of the team’s success as anyone—more so, in most cases. He should be with them to celebrate another major win.</p><p>Should it be Tommy who invited him? That was the only thing that made him pause. David had blown him off without blinking the last time Tommy’d asked him anywhere, like he’d never even consider it for a second. Fair enough. Tommy wasn’t exactly the stable relationship type and David sure as hell deserved more than what Tommy had to offer. But this was different. This was a group club crawl, not a private date. And David was part of the group.</p><p>By the time he’d finished thinking his way into and out of his concern, he was standing by David’s door. Tommy shrugged mentally, gave it the equivalent of an internal, unvoiced ‘fuck it,’ and hit the buzzer.</p><p>The door slid open a moment later, David already dressed down for the evening. Granted for him that seemed to mean taking off his sweater and rolling up the sleeves of his button-down shirt, but Tommy could appreciate a good forearm as much as the next guy. “Tom?” David asked by way of greeting, an eyebrow going up as he looked Tommy over. “Is something wrong?”</p><p>Tommy frowned, couldn’t help the reaction. Had he really been so disconnected from everything lately that David thought it was weird for him to come say hi? The past year and a half of Tommy’s life had been a revolving series of shitshows, sure, but that shouldn’t have done <em>that </em>much damage. Tommy stayed in the hall instead of barging his way in like he normally would.</p><p>“Wrong? No—nothing except you being in here and being boring when the rest of us are going out.” It came out maybe more belligerently than he wanted, but whatever. David should be used to him by now. “We’re hitting some clubs, shaking out the muscle cramps. You should come.”</p><p>David hesitated, shoving his hands in his trouser pockets and leaning his shoulder against the frame of his door. He wasn’t telling Tommy to go blow again, so that was an improvement. “Who’s ‘we’?” he asked, hesitating.</p><p>Tommy frowned as he tried to call up the names from his memory. “Eli, Kitty, Doug and most of Magnus’s pit crew; Billy and Teddy, of course. Kate and Chavez are on call tonight, sucks to be them, but Wendy’s coming. And when the Marshal’s aide-de-camp is let loose, you know she won’t mind if you’re out too,” he added, for a little extra peer pressure.  </p><p>“What about your cadets?”</p><p>“What about them?” Tommy asked, not catching the connection. “They’re all underage. I think. But they’re not invited. I’m not a teacher tonight, I just want to have some fun.” He wasn’t a teacher at <em>all, </em>frankly, and luckily he didn’t have to keep thinking about the cadets and his assignment because David looked like he just might be about to give in.</p><p>David relaxed, his shoulders settling, and a smile played over his lips. “It was a terrible idea to give you young minds to influence. I’ll-” He looked up and over Tommy’s shoulder and stopped whatever he was about to say.</p><p>“There you are! Ready to go, hero?”</p><p>Tommy turned at the cheerful call and saw what David had undoubtedly just seen. Darcy, heading their way, and looking… hot <em>damn</em>. She’d ditched the sweater and jeans for a flippy little dress and a leather motorcycle jacket, the skirt short enough that he could see where her high socks ended a couple of inches above her knees. Add dark red lips and her hair down in waves, and Tommy was—yeah. Mind blown. She joined them at David’s door, linked her arm through Tommy’s and waggled her fingers at David in a cheerful wave. “Chief Alleyne! Are you coming too?”</p><p>David had straightened up, not leaning against the wall anymore, and the smile was still on his face but gone from his eyes. “No,” he said, and Tommy was a hundred percent sure that hadn’t been the answer he’d been about to give. “Thanks, though. I think I’m going to sit this one out. I’m sure I’ll read all about it in the tabloids tomorrow,” he joked, but the vibe was off.</p><p>What was <em>that</em> about?</p><p>“You sure? I can grab a car instead of the bike, fit three,” Tommy offered.</p><p>“I’m sure. I’ll catch up with you guys later. That was good fighting out there today,” David offered back, like some kind of olive branch Tommy didn’t understand.</p><p>He fought against the urge to demand that David tell him why. Why he was being so weird, why he wasn’t joining the party, why he was keeping Tommy at arm’s length. Only Darcy was there, and he didn’t feel like explaining. David wouldn’t give him a straight answer anyway.</p><p>“Thanks,” Tommy replied, pulling on the cocky grin and swagger like the comfortable costume that it was. “Magnus Echo rides again. Higher, faster, stronger.”</p><p>“Don’t get too high on yourself, or you’ll sprain something,” Darcy snorted a laugh. “G’night, Chief!”</p><p>“Goodnight,” David said firmly, and stepped back inside his room. Even overtures at friendship weren’t good enough, apparently. Fuck it. At least Darcy wanted him. Tommy turned and headed off, Darcy’s arm still looped easily through his.</p><p>“So, how do <em>you</em> feel about motorcycles?”</p><hr/><p>He’d felt like hell leaving the base, but by the second club of the night Tommy was back in business. Darcy’d been a bit freaked by the paparazzi dogging the Shatterdome crowd at the first bar, but they’d both had a couple of drinks since then and the world was a lot easier to deal with when it was fuzzy around the edges.</p><p>The beat pulsed across the floor in time with the flashing lights, Tommy’s blood hotter even than the heat pouring off the sweaty bodies of the other dancers. Billy and Teddy were sacked out with him in the booth, Billy’s laughter carrying over the music. It was a good sound. He’d spent half a year wondering if he’d ever hear it again.</p><p>The unwelcome question came rolling in again. He had Billy back, got to keep Teddy in the bargain, but now what?</p><p>He didn’t want to deal with it now, that was what.</p><p>Tommy threw back his head and closed his eyes, let the beat pulse through him and carry him away. Fuck everything else. Right now he was a Maximoff, he was a goddamned hero, and the world was at his fucking feet.</p><p>Most of the world, anyway. One part of it—one that had most of his attention right now—was on her way back from the bar with a couple of shots in her hands, and he wanted her right there beside him and on his level. Darcy shoved a glass into his hand when she got back to the table.</p><p>“Bottom’s up. These were compliments of the house,” she announced, eyes alight. “Do you guys always get your drinks comped, or is this a save-the-world special? Because hanging out with you is going to be really good for my entertainment budget if it’s that first thing.”</p><p>“Nothing for us?” Teddy teased, and she made a face at him.</p><p>“I only have two hands, Ranger. Get them yourself.”</p><p>Tommy tossed the shot back and waited for the burn, never as strong as the first of the evening. It hit and he got to his feet, grabbing Darcy by the hand. “Dance floor’s waiting, Lewis.”</p><p>“And they say romance is dead.” She went with him anyway, one hand tucking into the tight back pocket of his jeans. It was easy to forget, then, ignore all the fractions of thoughts bumping around inside his head in favour of the girl in his arms. The world vanished, time slipping away in the space between drumbeats.</p><p>She molded against him, breasts firm against his chest, her hands cupping his ass and pulling him in as close as the clothes between them would allow. His mouth found hers and she leaned into it, nothing shy or tentative about her desire either. He tasted her lips, his heartbeat thundering in his ears in counterpoint to the music.</p><p>He couldn’t do everything he wanted, not in the middle of the dance floor with phone cameras already going off everywhere. He tugged Darcy by the hand, pulled her across the floor to the VIP section, the VIP washroom- the doorman let them in without a blink. He kicked the door closed behind them, Darcy threw the lock, and Tommy pushed her up against the wall.</p><p>Her arms looped around his neck and he boosted her up, her ass in his hands, until she could cross her legs behind his hips. Braced between him and the marbled tile, she bit at his lower lip, groaned into his insistent kiss. The little antechamber with a dressing mirror and a bench, a bowl of condoms on the counter, was a place that had definitely seen its share of hookups, and their rough breathing echoed in the small space.</p><p>Bracing her against his knee, Tommy slid his hands up her legs from her bent knees, the texture of her thigh-highs giving way to the silk-soft of her skin. Rocking up against her didn’t do anything to take the edge off, her mouth hot on his, tongue lancing between his willing lips. He fumbled her buttons open, freeing the fullness of her breasts to push into his hands. Darcy gasped and laughed, sucking in air when he rolled her nipple over his tongue. “Come on,” she urged, lacing a hand in his hair and holding his head there. He bit at her skin, nipped and licked the red marks left by his teeth.</p><p>So hard he hurt, blood pounding in his head, pulse beating in the heavy pleasure where their bodies met, Tommy worked a hand between them. She was wet, wet for him, the fabric of her underpants damp against his fingertips. Darcy wriggled against him, her back arching when he found the spot, rubbed with his thumb and pulled the rising moans from her lips.</p><p>“Do you have ‘good with my hands’ on your resume?” Darcy teased, tipping her hips toward him and digging her nails into his shoulders.</p><p>“I don’t advertise. Select audiences only.” He tasted her skin, the bright salt-sweat sparking on his tongue. He tugged the elastic aside, found the slick wet heat beyond, slid two fingers inside where his cock desperately wanted to be.</p><p>Darcy’s hands were on his belt buckle, his zip, fumbling between their bodies. She pulled his dick free, her hand closing around him and stars firing off behind his eyes at the easy slide of her hand. He needed—the words wouldn’t come for what he needed, only to be in her, consumed by her, to belong to her. “Condom,” Darcy said, her breath hot against his face.</p><p>“What?” Tommy asked, his brain derailed and lagging seconds behind his ears, struggling to keep up.</p><p>“I’m tipsy enough to be reckless, not trashed enough to be stupid,” Darcy replied, and those words made sense in the right order.</p><p>Tommy paused, taking his hand back and tucking it securely beneath her thigh. <em>Tipsy,</em> she’d said. He was too, but he knew his own mind and he’d wanted her even when sober. But just in case- “You’re good for this?” he asked seriously, catching and holding her eyes. “Because if you wanna pick this up again later when the drinks have worn off, I’m okay with that.”</p><p>“Tommy.” Darcy grabbed his head with both hands and held him steady, a smile curving those incredible lips. He wanted to see them wrapped around his cock, hear her cursing and calling his name. “Condom. Dick. Now.”</p><p>Lightning, goddamn lightning through his body setting every nerve ending alight. Putting her down was killing him, even for the second he needed to grab a foil wrapper from the bowl on the counter. A few seconds later and he was dropping down to sit on the padded bench, Darcy straddling him, her panties flung to parts unknown. He ran his hands up her thighs again, over and around the ring of naked skin above the tops of her thigh-highs. She sank down on him, her head tipped back and all those brown curls tumbling down behind her.</p><p>She took him inside and he thrust up to meet her, the barest layer of latex between them. He died in her, face between her breasts, first one nipple then the other in his mouth, his hands clenched tight around the folds of her skirt, holding them away from the place their bodies joined.</p><p>Darcy rode him, hot, slick, tight, rode him faster and harder, cried out when he bit her lip and pressed his thumbs into the firm roundness of her ass. “Come on,” Tommy coaxed her in return, the precipice hurtling toward him at unbearable speeds. <em>Her first. Always her.</em></p><p>
  <em>Kate’s got you whipped, baby boy-</em>
</p><p>Moving his thumb between him, pressing against her clit, he thrust up into her and matched the rhythm and the pace she set. Darcy cried out, movements getting jerky and frantic, and then she shook herself apart. He could feel the trembling shudders coursing through her and tight around him, and fuck everything, it was enough to send him hurtling over that edge of pleasure-pain in the next half-second.</p><p>He came, the lightning brighter and fiercer than before, leaving him a trembling husk. He ran his hands over all the skin he could reach as his body consumed itself in fire—not for a second time but in the rolling, burning kind of orgasm that just kept <em>on</em> coming. The waves broke over him again and he drowned in her.</p><p>The come-down followed, that familiar warm lethargy. Tommy buried his hands in Darcy’s hair, kissed and sucked at her full lower lip. She put up with him for a minute, his hard-on slowly flagging inside her, then picked herself up off his lap. “So?” Tommy asked nonchalantly, grabbing her hand before the moment could be over.</p><p>“Needy much? Not bad, hot teacher,” Darcy teased, and when she leaned over and kissed him again she smelled and tasted like sex. “A-plus, would do again.”</p><p>“Top of the class,” he joked, then stood and started to pull himself back together as she looked around for her underwear. Splashing water on his face and washing his hands a minute or two later, Tommy caught his own eye in the mirror. White hair, green eyes, and a shit-eating grin that was going to be plastered on his face for days.</p><p>“Goddamned hero,” he muttered to himself, firmly ignoring a sense of faint disquiet. The smile on his reflection never wavered.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>There's some thinking to be done, which has never been Tommy's favourite activity. Avoidance has worked well for him so far!</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The ride back to base, Darcy’s hands tight against his bare stomach under his t-shirt, ended with a kiss goodnight at her door. There’d been part of him that had hoped- the part of him that missed going to sleep with someone’s back pressed against his chest. But a quick-and-dirty bathroom hookup wasn’t the kind of thing that led to cuddling, fair enough.</p><p>Still, she kissed him at the door and left him with a “let’s do this again sometime” and a twinkle in her eye. It was better than a kick in the teeth.</p><p>He could go back to his room, try and catch some zees himself, but his brain was still buzzing, the dj’s beat still thrumming in his ears. He’d be bouncing off the walls of his little concrete cubicle if he tried to crash now. Billy and Teddy were still out, so harassing them wasn’t an option. There was always the gym, work off some of the energy on a punching bag or a rowing machine, but that wasn’t at all appealing either.</p><p>Tommy found himself most of the way to the cafeteria before he noticed what direction he’d been wandering. David wouldn’t be there at that time of night. Dude had been very clear that his big plans for the evening didn’t involve leaving his room. But a snack would be a distraction, and distractions were always good.</p><p>Only once again, by the time he emerged from the kitchen with a mile-high sandwich and a can of pop in hand, there was someone sitting at a table in the half-lit room. A frown crossed Tommy’s face and he headed over, dropping into the chair across from Cadet Oliver.</p><p>She glanced up when he approached, sat tall and looked like she was about to salute before he waved her off. “Sit down, Cadet. I’m not wearing any kind of rank right now.”</p><p>This time he sounded like Carol when she was still being all ‘Marshal Danvers’ but pretending that she wasn’t. Gross.</p><p>Tommie gave him a tight smile and nodded. “Ranger Maximoff. There’s no rule against being out of quarters-”</p><p>“Of course there isn’t. And even if there were, I wouldn’t care,” Tommy advised her, before she could get any big ideas in her head about getting into trouble for a three-am snack run. Only she didn’t have a plate or cup in front of her, and there were dark bags under her eyes. Tommy’s natural inclination towards being nosy as fuck fought desperately with his reluctance to let his guard down around the cadets. Nosy won.</p><p>“It’s obviously not the siren song of leftover whatever-the-hell dinner was that dragged you out of bed,” Tommy pointed out. He picked up half of his sandwich and took a bite, the jolt of spicy mustard punching through the faint boozy-ness and the taste of sex that still lined the inside of his mouth. “What’s up?”</p><p>“Nothing,” Tommie replied in what felt more like a reflex than an honest answer. Then- “just weird dreams.”</p><p>She frowned, her elbows on the table and her chin sunk in her hands. Her straight brown hair was tied back from her face in a half-ponytail, the rest left to hang down around her shoulders. The PPDC Academy t-shirt she wore was already faded around the edges of the logo and hung loose on her shoulders. Not hers, then; a boyfriend’s? An older brother? Tommy couldn’t think of another Oliver in the Corps, but filed the thought away. He knew intellectually that the cadets were young, but this was the first time it really clicked home that they were still basically babies. Something about her was reminding him of Luna, he decided, even though his little cousin was still in high school and ideally would stay far away from the west coast and the destruction that lurked in the ocean.</p><p>“Lay off the hot sauce,” Tommy advised with a grin. “I think they source that shit from Chernobyl.”</p><p>That won him a half-smile and a softly snorted laugh from the girl across the table. She wasn’t happy, not especially, but it was a start. “Point taken.” She watched him eat for a minute, the silence stretching out between them. Tommy chewed louder, filling that void with noise—even if it was mostly in his own head.</p><p>“We’re not going to make it, are we?” Tommie asked, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms across her chest. “As rangers, I mean. None of the tests we’ve done have shown anything beyond the idea that we could be drift-compatible, if we wanted to be. But I don’t know how that’s going to be possible.”</p><p>Nothing like cutting right to the heart of the matter. “Beats the hell out of me,” Tommy answered honestly. But he’d been open about his skepticism from the beginning, so that shouldn’t come as any kind of shock. “The only successful pairing I’ve ever seen that didn’t have a base of trust before the Academy is Bishop and Chavez.”</p><p>Tommie arched her eyebrow in a look that he was starting to recognize as ‘challenge mode.’ “You and Ranger Altman didn’t know each other before he tested in.”</p><p>Tommy shook his head adamantly. “That was a totally different situation. <em>Billy</em> and I had a bond. Have a bond. We’re twins, and you can’t get a better, tighter link than that. Our brains were literally one brain at the very start.” That wasn’t quite how cell division worked, but whatever. The metaphor was sound.</p><p>“But you made the drift work with a stranger while your brother was on leave.”</p><p>“Billy chose him. I didn’t. None of it would have worked out if Billy’s subconscious hadn’t fallen for the guy.”</p><p>Tommie frowned and shook her head. “I still don’t get it.”</p><p>“None of us really do. All that matters is that it’s not the kind of thing that can be recreated in a classroom, or in a neuroscience lab.” Tommy shoved the last of the sandwich half into his mouth and chewed defiantly. It was their miracle, dammit. And if it wasn’t a miracle, wasn’t their special synergy, just something that could be replicated with the right electronic parts, then… back to that same old question. What was the point?</p><p>“Drifting is personal. More than talking, or even sex. You can learn what someone’s about in a conversation or a hookup, but letting them into your brain? You don’t know if they’re going to start breaking shit. And once they’re in there, you’re screwed.”</p><p>She wasn’t following him, that much was obvious. Or at the very least she didn’t agree, her jaw set as she mulled things over. “You don’t think people can learn to trust each other?”</p><p>Now there was a loaded question. “Depends how you define ‘trust.’ I think real trust is a hell of a lot harder than most people pretend it is.” Tommy slouched in his chair, unconsciously mirroring Tommie’s defensive folded-arms stance. “There’s a difference between trusting someone to do their job and trusting them inside your head where all the dark shit lives. There should be a different word for it, because it’s not even on the same level of reality.” Either the booze was still kicking around in his system making his jaw flap—and in that case he definitely should have called for a cab rather than drive the bike back to base—or there was something about the relative quiet of the middle of the night and the dim light in the room that was setting Tommy’s defenses on a lower setting than usual. Speaking of trust issues.</p><p>“What’s going on with you guys, anyway?” Tommy watched Tommie for a moment, then pushed his plate over to her, the other half of his sandwich still untouched. “From the briefing I got I half-figured you’d all be besties before they dropped you here, but that’s obviously not happening.”</p><p>“Everyone’s on edge, and it’s gotten worse since leaving the Academy. We didn’t really know each other there—just that we were the ones without pre-arranged co-pilots.”  Tommie shrugged one shoulder, then picked up Tommy’s sandwich and took a hefty bite. Conch passed. Her turn to talk.</p><p>“No… that’s not entirely true,” she amended after chewing. “The other guys at least had classes together. Jason and Kim even knew each other from high school, I think, though I get the impression they didn’t hang out. But I’m definitely the new kid, even among the other rejects.” She made a face that Tommy recognized. It had been a while since he’d seen that look in the mirror.</p><p>“Are they fucking with you?” Tommy asked. First things first. “Because if they are, I can shut that shit down real quick. Send them to go scrub Magnus with toothbrushes. Danvers stupidly gave me that kind of authority.”</p><p>“No, nothing like that. Kim’s even been sweet.” A flicker of what Tommy assumed was interest flared in Tommie’s eyes for a second before it died. “But she pretty much only hangs out with Trini right now. Billy spends all his time tinkering with his machines-”</p><p>“Hang on. His what?”</p><p>“These detectors he’s been building. He’s convinced someone’s reading our minds and that he can track their brainwaves with these gadgets. Between you and me,” Tommie confided in him, “I think the stress is getting to him. He really likes things to be predictable, or at least logical, and this whole situation is anything but.” </p><p>“Yeah, ‘predictable’ isn’t exactly what he’s signed on for. Not if he wants to be a Ranger.”</p><p>Tommy watched Tommie finish off the sandwich, mulling over the new information. He was too damn tired—and probably still a little too tipsy—to deal with cadet freakouts in any kind of rational way. (Teddy would be very proud to find out that Tommy had considered doing anything in a rational way at all, but there it was.) “I’ll talk to the Marshal in the morning, try and get something useful out of her,” he decided aloud, standing to go. “Even if she can’t give me a straight answer about co-piloting, I can bug the hell out of her until she coughs up <em>something</em>. I’m very good at being incredibly irritating.”</p><p>Tommie’s lips twitched but she didn’t actively crack up in front of him. She had good self-control. “Night, sir.”</p><p>“’Night, cadet. And if the nightmares keep on being a problem,” he added, with a whole lot of sympathy, “talk to Dr. Hussein in medical. She keeps the good drugs under serious lockup, but she’s got some shit that would knock a kaiju flat. Get you a decent night’s sleep, if nothing else.”</p><p>He waited long enough to see her nod, then left the cafeteria for the quiet, solitary walk back to his quarters, and his bed.</p><hr/><p>Tommy went to bed alone and woke up to the certain knowledge that someone else was in his room. He pulled out of his dream, bolting upright with fists up- only to find his stupid twin brother sitting at the end of his bed. “Come <em>on</em>,” Tommy groaned, adrenaline coursing through his veins even as he tried to calibrate exactly where and when he was.</p><p>Nine in the morning, according to the clock set in the wall above his desk, and Billy was staring him down from the corner of his bunk.</p><p>“Soooo…” Billy drawled, one eyebrow arched in that judgmental way he had when he was about to give Tommy shit for something. “Want to tell me what’s going on with you and Darcy Lewis?”</p><p>“Consenting adults,” Tommy informed him, and rolled out of bed. He was naked and Billy recoiled.</p><p>“Augh, dude. That’s way too much of you. Put some shorts on or something.”</p><p>Tommy ignored him, taking longer than strictly necessary to find clean boxers and a t-shirt while Billy made gagging noises behind him. “How are you not hung over?” Billy complained at him, sprawling flat on Tommy’s unmade bed. “You matched me drink for drink, and my head’s the size of an asteroid.”</p><p>“Clean living,” Tommy snarked back, ducking his head under the stream of cold water from the sink. The freezing blast shocked his sinuses and made everything in his forehead tighten at once, driving sleep away. “Why are you in my room, again?”</p><p>“Darcy,” Billy repeated, waiting for an answer. Persistent brat.</p><p>Tommy deflected the question. “She’s neat. I like her. Why does it need to be anything more?”</p><p>“Give me some credit, dude. I know you a little and one of those things I know is that you’re not as good with the whole ‘lone wolf’ thing as you pretend to be.” Billy scoffed. He did know, that was the worst thing. <em>Once they’re in there, you’re screwed.</em></p><p>“Maybe not. But I’m getting some amazing ass in the meantime.”  </p><p>“Are you gross on purpose?”</p><p>“Yes, specifically to piss you off.” Tommy grabbed a towel and rubbed it over his wet hair, conveniently blocking Billy from watching his face. “That’s my goal in life, to be as annoying to my baby brother as humanly possible.”</p><p>“It’s working.”</p><p>Draping the towel around his neck and searching for uniform pants, Tommy had to decide whether to try once more to put down the elephant in the room. “Start being nice to Kate again, all right? I don’t need you getting mad <em>for</em> me. This isn’t a sides-picking issue,” he added, pulling on his pants and buckling the belt. “She and I were never going to play house like you and Teddy, even if you did have your heart set on her for a sister-in-law.”</p><p>He felt a brief burst of satisfaction at the guilty look that crossed Billy’s face. Busted the matchmaker. “I know how you felt about her, that’s all.”</p><p>“Past tense,” Tommy emphasized. “Moving on with my life. Let it go. Now get the hell out of my room before I floss my teeth over your hair.”</p><p>“It’s moments like these that I wonder how I ever imagined I could room with someone else,” Billy ducked out of arm’s reach, the sarcasm thick in his voice. He got out of the way before Tommy could get the last word in, but at least he could finish getting washed and dressed in relative quiet. His stomach grumbled at him and he weighed his options. Eat something and risk being late for cadet-sitting, or go straight to the barracks and risk the hangry meltdown before lunch rolled around?</p><p>Food, definitely. Food trumped playing kindergarten teacher any day. And it would give him some more time to mull over the things Oliver had laid on him during their talk. If one of the cadets was decompensating enough already to imagine things like surveillance telepathy, life was about to get a whole lot more interesting.</p><hr/><p>At 0900 hours, a generic-looking sergeant in a crisply pressed PPDC uniform, his nametag reading the very generic surname of Smith, knocked at the door to the cadets’ makeshift barracks. The buzzing and beeping of equipment from the Jaeger Tech Division echoed faintly into the room as the door slid open and the six cadets snapped to attention.</p><p>“Ranger on- oh.” Jason Scott relaxed immediately after seeing that the visitor wasn’t Ranger Maximoff. Not that he had been trying to impress. The others left what they were doing and gathered by the door, the crew-cut non-com with the shiny shoes looking them over with distant curiosity.</p><p>“Where’s Ranger Maximoff?” Trini asked, slinging her towel around her neck. Zack was just as sweaty from their impromptu sparring session as she was, though he settled for using the back of his arm to wipe his glistening forehead dry.</p><p>“He’ll catch up with you later,” Smith said, impassive as a brick wall. “I’m taking you all down to medical.”</p><p>“Medical? Why?”</p><p>“Aw man; not more EEGs, my hair just grew back from the last set.”</p><p>“I’m not privy to that information, cadets. Just come with me.”</p><p>Jason scanned the room, similar confusion on everyone’s faces. He caught Kim’s eye and she hesitated, then shrugged. What choice did they have, really? “Sure, just let me grab my boots.”</p><p>The hubbub as they made their way through the halls caught a little bit of attention, but no-one interrupted between the barracks and the medical wing.</p><p>Billy confidently continued past the un-labelled door in the concrete hallway where Smith stopped, making it three or four steps before he pulled up short. “Dr. Hussein is this way,” he said pointedly, but Smith just shook his perfectly crew-cut head.</p><p>“You’re going here.”</p><p>‘Here’ was a lab that Jason had never been in before, dusty boxes stacked against the back wall and one of the overhead fluorescent lights flickering like the bulb was on the verge of death. A smiling man in a lab coat stood to greet them, the six cadets practically filling the narrow space beside his scrupulously tidy desk.</p><p>“Come in, come in,” he greeted them cheerfully. His name tag had flopped so that Jason couldn’t see the ID badge part. The guy caught him looking, and winked with another disarming grin. “I’m Dr. Sterns, and I promise this won’t take too much of your day.”</p><p>“What’s this about? Where’s Dr. Hussein?” Tommie asked, her arms folded in front of her and her chin tight, like she was mad about something. Jason was tempted to trust Sterns based purely on the fact that Tommie clearly didn’t, but something he couldn’t put his finger on was setting the hair prickling on the back of his neck. That and Billy was radiating discomfort so openly that even Zack would be able to pick up on it. No bueno, for sure.</p><p>“Faiza? Oh, she’s busy, very busy, I’m just helping out for the day. And don’t you kids worry about a thing,” he soothed ineffectively. “It’s just some tests, you know how it goes. More data for your files,” Sterns prattled on, busying himself with a set of test tubes and labels on the desk. Jason recognized those; blood draw tubes. And in a small box that Sterns opened up and set next to them, six opaque vials of what looked like medications.</p><p>The impulse set in to argue, wanted to run—but there was nothing weird about more medical tests, not really. Jason’s life since testing for the Academy had half revolved around fitness tests, lung capacity tests, health surveys and brain scans. When you thought about it like that, what was one more blood test? Anything to help prove to Maximoff that Jason belonged there. That all six of them did. That and Smith’s back was against the door, and he’d be one obstacle too may if Jason chose now to wimp out.</p><p>“A blood draw and a vitamin booster shot to compensate for the cruddy diet around here, and then you’ll be on your way,” Sterns kept talking, keeping up a steady stream of cheerful chatter that found some of them relaxing. Tommie put up an argument about the shot, something about whether it would interfere with her other meds, and Billy looked miserable and sounded worse, but in the end they all got under Sterns’ needles.</p><p>The shot stung as it went in, something in it burning down Jason’s arm worse than any tetanus booster he’d had in the past. He rubbed at his arm as Smith led them back to the barracks, flexing the muscle and feeling a new and vaguely unpleasant stiffness settling in.</p><p>“I don’t like this.” Tommie had slipped up beside him and was speaking low, low enough for Smith not to overhear them.</p><p>Kim dropped back to listen, and Jason ignored the way her hand brushed against the back of Tommie’s. “What do you think was really in that shot? Iron supplements like he said?”</p><p>“I sure as hell hope so,” Jason muttered, his eyes fixed on the back of Smith’s head. “But unless we want to sound paranoid, we keep it to ourselves. We can’t find out if something’s up if we’re all sent home.”  </p><hr/><p>The cadets weren’t anywhere to be found after he’d snagged himself a bagel-like-object from the cafeteria. Medical, one of the techs helpfully informed him after he asked around; rounded up for some kind of routine checkup. It meant he wasn’t officially late for anything, and that gave him time to make a checkup of his own.</p><p>
  <strong>Tommy: where r u rn? </strong>
</p><p>It took a minute of drumming his fingers against the back of his phone before her reply came in.</p><p>
  <strong>Darcy: Working, duh. Chasing Jane around with paperwork she refuses to look at. Can you forge signatures?</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Tommy: I wouldn’t admit it in writing if I could. Coming over.</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Darcy: We’re not fucking in the bathroom here. The stall is nasty.</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Tommy: </strong>
  <strong>☹</strong>
</p><p>He caught up with Darcy after she’d caught up with Jane, the physicist surrounded by overlapping holographic projections and layers of glowing tech diagrams. “Ten minutes,” Jane promised, swiping three screens to the side and ducking away from the file folder Darcy was waving at her. “Ten, maybe fifteen.”</p><p>“You said that ten minutes ago,” Darcy argued, getting nowhere fast.</p><p>“I mean it this time.”</p><p>“Sure, like you-“ Darcy caught sight of Tommy, lounging against the wall and watching the show, and broke off her complaint. “Fine. Ten minutes, then I’m dragging you over to your desk by your ponytail.”</p><p>“Deal,” Jane agreed too quickly, her eyes focused on everything but the people in the vast repair bay with her.</p><p>“Coffee break time,” Darcy announced to the air, grabbing Tommy by the lapel as she headed for the door. The moment the door slid closed behind them she balled up her fists and let out a short, sharp shriek, a noise of frustration that Tommy felt in his bones.</p><p>“Better?” he asked when she was done, and Darcy let out a puff of air.</p><p>“Mostly. I adore Jane, I really do. She’s awesome, and wicked-smart, but I swear to God, scientists are the <em>worst</em>.”  </p><p>Was that a twinge of disloyalty Tommy was feeling when he cheerfully agreed with her? It didn’t make sense, because none of the people he hung out with were capital-S Scientists. David came closest, maybe, but he was more of an engineer, and why was Darcy staring at him like she’d asked a question and he’d missed it?</p><p>Tommy rewound the conversation in his brain until he found the spot where he’d gone wandering off on his own thought-train, and scrambled to reboot. “What was that about Alleyne?”</p><p>“That conversation last night was a little weird. Chief Alleyne goes out all the time, but yesterday—not so much. He’s not your ex or anything, is he?”</p><p>Tommy had to stop walking, stumbling as he missed a step from the way that question had come so totally, completely out of the blue. “What? No! Alleyne’s not my ex. Billy’s the gay twin.” Guilt stabbed him somewhere in his middle at that rote response, but… yeah. Despite the bathroom fuck, he wasn’t close enough to Darcy yet to let her see all the nooks and crannies of his psyche.</p><p>She nodded, taking it in stride, but her arms were folded in front of her when she tipped up her chin to look him in the eye. “So who have you dated on base? Just so I’m clear.”</p><p>That was a much easier question to answer, putting him back on familiar and easy territory. “Kate for a while, then she dumped me for Chavez.” And since they were having the body count conversation, the ‘how many women have seen you naked’ conversation, he kept talking. “Chavez, sort of.”</p><p>Darcy’s brow furrowed and she frowned at him. “I thought Chavez was gay.”</p><p>The hallway was mercifully empty, though considering how gossip spread on base the idea that there was anything like privacy anywhere was a pipe dream. At least he could maintain the illusion that a thousand people weren’t about to be all up in his business. “Yeah. It was mostly Kate. A pity thing, while Billy was… out of commission.” The words glossed over a shitload of garbage, made the whole year something nice and tidy. ‘Out of commission’ sounded a lot better than ‘floating disembodied in the ether while his empty body rotted away in front of me, and I came this close to losing my own mind.’</p><p>Darcy went quiet for a beat as she considered his answer, then grinned at him and he figured that he wasn’t in trouble after all. “So you and she actually…” Darcy trailed off.</p><p>Tommy shook his head. “Not like that. She pegged me while I fucked Kate, or sometimes they let me watch and jerk off while they went at it.” Time to derail this conversation before it went even more private places. He grinned back at her, rested his hand on the wall by her shoulder and leaned in close. “…does it get you going to hear about this stuff?”</p><p>She laughed and smacked him lightly, shaking her head, but she stayed under the arch of his arm and didn’t duck away. “Not really. I just want to know what kind of melodrama I’m getting myself into.”</p><p>“No melodrama,” Tommy promised, stealing the chance to take a deep breath by her hair, the combination of shampoo-y perfume and freshness catapulting straight back to last night when he’d been inside her. His nerves hummed, his pulse picking up the pace. “I’m just here to have a good time.”</p><p>“That’s all?” she murmured, lips close to his.</p><p>“What else is there? Stay alive, fight monsters, hang out with cute, smart girls.”</p><p>“And I fall into this plan where?”</p><p>“Cutest and smartest,” he promised, stealing the kiss she was offering.</p><p>“Good answer, hero.” But something about the way she said that didn’t entirely silence the faint warning bell going off in the back of his mind. He kissed her again, something which always made the static stop. At least for a little while.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Tommy meets Sarah, the author starts to work out some of her hate-issues with Uprising, and cracks begin to form in the matrix. Or at least, things with Darcy might be getting complicated.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tommy finally found the cadets huddled up together on one of the catwalks in the Shatterdome, watching Stark mind-meld with Jaeger parts. He had Magnus’ conn-pod open and his engineers were swarming all over her inner workings, taking measurements and readings before stripping her for parts. It felt violating, like seeing her naked. “Gentle with her, Stark, that’s the world’s best Kaiju-smasher you’ve got your dirty fingers on,” Tommy called out, startling some of the cadets into ramrod-straight attention. </p><p>“At least I treat her like a lady,” Stark called back from the harness that he was dangling from, three feet over the open skull of the massive Jaeger. “You assholes keep denting my tech!”</p><p>“<em>Your</em> tech? I’d like to see you try and tell Magnus what to do.” Tommy replied, incredulous. He’d have kept going with the banter, half-dangling over the waist-high barricade that blocked off the catwalk from the floor almost a hundred feet below, but Teddy was there shepherding the cadets around and looking about as wounded as Tommy felt. Magnus was Teddy’s girl as much as she was Billy and Tommy’s, after all. He had the tattoo on his bicep to prove it, same as the ones that wound their way around Tommy’s hipbone and Billy’s shoulder.</p><p>They were a team even without their Jaeger, and once she was back together and better-than-ever, they’d still be the best in the Pacific.</p><p>Mollified and comforted by the reminder, Tommy dismissed Stark with a jaunty flip of his middle finger and sauntered easily towards the group. “S’up, jerkface?” he greeted Teddy with a grin and a fistbump that Teddy returned.</p><p>It would be nice to say that he couldn’t remember life without the big dummy in it, but that wasn’t exactly the case. There was the span of time where it had been <em>Tommy and Billy.</em> Then there was an expanse of darkness where it had just been <em>Tommy</em>. Then Teddy had arrived and dragged Tommy kicking and screaming out of the shadows. Now they were different again, <em>TommyBillyTeddy</em>, and something about his brother and their co-pilot’s gooey domestic bliss was obviously getting lodged in Tommy’s mind despite his best efforts. He shoved the irritating mental image out of the way and hauled his focus back to the here-and-now.</p><p>“She’s prepping for brain surgery,” Teddy informed him, his lower lip jutting out in the suggestion of a pout. “I miss her already.”</p><p>“Stark and Foster better put her back together better than promised,” Tommy grumbled, turning away from the scene of impending carnage beyond the railing. “What’re you doing with the cadets?”</p><p>“Your job,” Teddy replied dryly, but without the pointed sarcasm Tommy would have gotten from Billy. “Where were you?”</p><p>“I stopped to talk to Darce on the way over. It wasn’t a big deal,” Tommy objected when Teddy shot him a glare with a flash of annoyance in it. You win some, you lose some. “The cadets probably appreciate your Mr. Rogers routine better anyway.” They were over in the alcove getting a lesson on wiring from Kitty at the moment, so at least they weren’t eavesdropping. Except maybe Cranston, who was more jittery than Tommy’d ever seen him before, constantly looking over his shoulder.</p><p>“They look up to you, you know.” Teddy’s gentle corrections were worse than getting yelled at. He was just so damned <em>earnest</em> about it that ignoring him turned you into the world’s biggest heel.</p><p>Tommy snorted. “Then they’re morons.”</p><p>“Nice. They’re also yours, because I’m meeting Eli and Uncle Joe in ten.” Teddy clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to make Tommy stumble forward, that stupid grin never faltering.</p><p>“Son of a bitch,” Tommy sighed, poking his elbow at Teddy’s gut half-heartedly. It didn’t connect, but he hadn’t imagined it would. There was always option two—“where’s Billy?”</p><p>“Working out, I think. He has physio for his knees today.” Teddy checked his phone and started to head off. “Dr. Selvig is expecting them in J-tech. Have fun!”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah,” Tommy muttered under his breath. Then, because Cranston was looking at him and the other cadets were starting to notice he was there, he put on his metaphorical big-boy pants and headed over to join them.</p><p>“Nice of you to join us,” Kitty greeted him cheerfully, but the glint in her eye meant he was in for it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually she’d get him. There was comforting consistency in that, a little bit like Cassie was still around to prank him and giggle while he plotted his own revenge. Only he’d never hooked up with Cassie.</p><p>Kitty’d been a kind of accident, partly a drunken hookup celebrating his first Kaiju kill, partly his unfailing ability to crush on people a hell of a lot smarter than himself. Only Kitty had been smart enough to kick him to the curb early enough that they could stay friends—and she could be his crew chief—without things getting weird.</p><p>“I know you guys can’t get enough of me down here,” he teased her, trying to elbow his way through the fog of overthinking that seemed to be eating his brain this morning. “Especially after a display of heroics like yesterday.”</p><p>“If I needed to see you show your ass, I could just check today’s tabloids,” Kitty sniped him back with a grin. “But back to today’s topic—Tom. Why don’t you tell the cadets the major differences between the simulator and piloting a Jaeger?”</p><p>Tommy snorted. “What, other than absolutely everything? The circuit suit and drivesuit combination is the same, but the way they interact with your nervous system is totally different.”</p><p>She’d gotten him to go off on one of his favourite soapboxes, he realized after a minute, and what was weirder was the way the cadets were actually listening. He was getting seriously into the weeds on the details, long after other people had usually tuned out on him, and not only were they paying attention, some of them were actually asking him to tell them more. Not Scott, Tommy hadn’t exactly earned his buy-in yet, but Kitty faded back to her workstation with a smile on her face, and he ended up herding the gaggle down to Selvig still talking.</p><p>“And that’s when it gets into the particle physics which even I don’t understand,” Tommy wrapped up, his ducklings following him into the workroom where the new simulator system lurked. And so was the scientist who’d built it, a dumpy middle-aged guy whose hairline had seen better days. “Selvig,” Tommy greeted him with a nod, then went to explore the new setup more thoroughly.</p><p>Something new had been added to the system since the last time he’d looked at it. It had looked like a regular old simulator with a couple of high-tech rigs hanging in the middle, but now there was a setup that looked like a hanging lantern, except the dangling hook was covered in wires and electrodes, and hanging from it was a jar.</p><p>And in the jar, a brain.</p><p>Just a brain. Sitting there, with blinking lights on the container supposedly demonstrating what—electrical activity? Tommy swallowed back the instinctive revulsion at the synapse tracking, a memory of the acrid stench of hospital disinfectant hitting him where it hurt.</p><p>“The fuck?” he asked instead, letting his mouth take over. He poked the jar but it was fastened to the stand too tightly to swing. “Hallowe’en was weeks ago, dude. You need to redecorate.”</p><p>“And you need to not be touching things, Ranger.” Selvig hustled over and batted his hands away from the equipment, checking the settings and switches one by one.</p><p>“I didn’t hit any buttons,” Tommy insisted sulkily. “Whose brain is that?”</p><p>“Her name was Sarah,” Selvig replied, gesturing to the cadets to draw them closer. He started moving them around, taking Kwan’s arm and bringing her over to stand by Hart, then moving Taylor to stand with Oliver before switching Oliver over to Cranston, talking all the while. “She was a colleague of Dr. Lightcap and donated her brain to the Jaeger project. She believed in the innate abilities of every human mind, Ranger Maximoff. As do I.”</p><p>While Selvig’s back was turned, Scott and Oliver glanced at each other and swapped places, putting Scott with Cranston and Oliver back with Taylor. Tommy hid a grin and said nothing.</p><p>“I still don’t see what that has to do with a simulator,” Kwan picked up the thread of Tommy’s questioning.</p><p>“Cheerleading?” Tommy suggested sarcastically and Selvig rolled his eyes and heaved a sigh.</p><p>“She is here to be a subject for drifting, Mr. Maximoff. Part of the newest advances in human-jaeger connections. If learning how to drift with a conscious partner is too difficult, then we take it back a level and learn how to drift with the echo of consciousness. There is less vulnerability that way, maybe less difficult.”</p><p>“A zombie brain? That’s just nasty.” Tommy recoiled at the thought. It would be like drifting with Billy’s empty body while his mind and soul had been trapped inside Magnus. All the squelchy parts might be there, but there was nothing inside.</p><p>“That’s <em>science</em>. There’s nothing mystical about the drift, Ranger. It’s all in here, and in here.” Selvig tapped Tommy’s forehead, then the case holding the brain.</p><p>“But she doesn’t get to consent; you don’t find that even a little bit terrible?” Tommy pushed, the bit between his teeth now and a soap-box rant building. “Anyone can get in there and read everything she ever was.”</p><p>“Pre-emptive consent. A heart donor doesn’t get to choose who receives their gift of life.”</p><p>“That’s totally different. An organ doesn’t come with a back door into the donor’s psyche.”</p><p>“Maybe, maybe no. In the meantime, I have more tests to complete, so if you please?” Selvig brushed him aside impatiently, and Tommy scowled at his back as the older man handed out clipboards with forms to each of the cadet pairs. “We have many things to accomplish today, and not many hours in which to do them.”</p><p>“Yeah, sure,” Tommy grumbled, glaring at the brain. Sarah, whoever she really was, didn’t react.</p>
<hr/><p>Wherever Billy had been that morning, he was in his thinking spot by lunch. Bag in hand, Tommy jumped up the creaky metal stairs inside the scaffolding two at a time, heading for the landing. It was one of those things that Billy did when the world got too loud inside his head; he came to the hangar and sat on a corrugated metal balcony where he could look out over Magnus Echo’s launch bay and ponder his navel.</p><p>One of the bays still sat empty, a vacant hole in the world. A small shrine had sprung up there a few months ago, over the scuffed marks on the concrete of the Shatterdome floor where Stinger Goliath had once stood. Tommy didn’t look that way, knew even without seeing them that the flowers among the mementoes and notes from the grieving would be bright yellow. The dead ones—those were carefully removed and replaced while Marshal Danvers officially looked the other way. Some new Jaeger and team would take that spot eventually and the shrine would have to go, replaced by some dead-eyed holograms on the wall of heroes. Circle of life in the PPDC.</p><p>Tommy relaxed when he caught sight of Billy. This time he was sitting with his back against the wall, one leg dangling casually over the 60-foot drop beyond the railing, methodically working his way through a vague approximation of a sub sandwich. That posture meant today was just a thinking day, not a ‘my head is turning itself inside out’ medical issue. He hadn’t had one of those episodes in months, but Tommy’d been in the habit of watching his twin’s mood and health changes for too long to stop now. It was dumb and Billy complained every time he realized Tommy was still doing it. Tough. It was a hard habit to break.</p><p>“I’m not tired or migrainey,” Billy said by way of greeting, and Tommy flopped down beside him with his back against the railing.</p><p>“Hi to you too,” Tommy ignored the critique and pulled his own lunch out of the bag he’d grabbed from the cafeteria. Some important ingredient had obviously been in short supply this week, the bread gummy and unpleasant. Still, food was food. “Avoiding someone?”</p><p>“Not this time. I came to see how the start of the refit was going and decided to hang out for a while.” He grinned, his smile a bright and sparking thing the mirror image of Tommy’s. “You and Teddy are the only ones who ever look for me here. I can actually get some quiet time.”</p><p>“So much for that idea,” Tommy joked, light and easy. There’d been a time when this had seemed so impossible, during the dark months when Billy’s laugh had been nothing but a memory. He’d taken his baby brother for granted before that. No matter how much Billy bitched about his hovering now, he wouldn’t make the same mistake again.</p><p>“No kidding,” Billy snorted. “Though I don’t blame you for looking for a place to escape. I heard this morning didn’t go so well?”</p><p>“No thanks to Dr. Selvig and his bag of tricks,” Tommy griped, seizing the opening with both hands. “Did you know he’s got a brain in a jar? He’s trying to teach the cadets to drift with it. A dead brain!”</p><p>Billy pulled a face and Tommy was mollified. At least he wasn’t the only one that saw the problems with that. “That’s really weird, not gonna lie. Did he say why?”</p><p>“Apparently it’ll help them figure out how to drift with each other better. I don’t think it helped, for the record. They all look hungover today, so I’m guessing barracks party last night. Scott, Oliver and Kwan are all at least a little bit in love with Hart, Taylor got heatstroke or something and started puking, and Cranston’s gonna find himself stabbed in his sleep if he doesn’t pull his head out of his ass.”</p><p>“Not like you care, or anything,” Billy prompted, looking a little smug for no reason Tommy could figure out.</p><p>“Why would I? They’re just time-fillers until I can do my real job again.” That rejection felt less and less true every time he thought about it, though. He was starting to care. About a couple of them. A little. It would suck if Oliver washed out; she had potential. And excellent choice in names. Still, if Tommy looked like he was coming around, Carol might start to seriously think about sending him to the Academy if she got sick of his shit here. Fuck that noise.</p><p>Tommy shrugged expansively and crammed the rest of his sub in his mouth. “That’sh how if goesh. At least they don’t entirely suck in fight training.”</p><p>“Oh yes, because you’re just so ironically detached,” Billy mocked him. “Too cool for school, you big baby? You just don’t want to admit that you might be enjoying this teacher thing.”</p><p>“Shaddup. You don’t know anything.” He sat in companionable silence for a while, Billy not pushing his point, but the itch under Tommy’s skin didn’t go away. “I thought I’d feel less restless once we got to punch something, but it only helped for a little while.”</p><p>Billy took the confession with a slow nod, like he’d expected it. “Fighting only fixes so much. Even you have to slow down and stop running sometime. Maybe we need a vacation.”</p><p>“What, go sack out on a sandy beach somewhere?” Tommy joked, but even so- he shook his head, the thought of deliberately doing <em>nothing at all</em> for days on end much too close for comfort. “I don’t like that idea. And even when my body stops, my brain keeps going. You know how it feels.”</p><p>Billy agreed with him, following his gaze out over the expanse of the Shatterdome. “Do I ever. Especially now. Maybe… maybe it’s not boredom. Ever think about that? Maybe it’s the idea that we might have something to look forward to when this is all over.”</p><p>When the war was over—it was a conversation they’d had on this landing before. Something about the enclosed space, the metal stairs running up and down from the landing, the shadows that hid them from the world seemed to inspire that topic. Only now Tommy knew the kind of future Billy was imagining. And it wasn’t one where he would easily fit.</p><p>“White picket fence in Connecticut?” he made a joke out of it, because that was what Tommy Maximoff did.</p><p>Billy wasn’t taking the bait today, rolling his eyes in Tommy’s direction. “You laugh now, but there’s something nice about the idea of peace, being able to do what we want when we want. Not having all this responsibility on our shoulders for a while. We’re still going back to school when the war ends, right?” he changed the conversation.</p><p>He included Tommy in his ‘we’ so effortlessly that Tommy felt relief from a fear he’d refused to consciously acknowledge. Going back to class and picking up where he’d left off, being a student again, nothing pressing on him but the easy simplicity of circuit diagrams and microprocessors. And who knew robotics better than someone who’d practically lived inside one for years? “Yeah,” he agreed. Then pointed out the obvious—“but our old dorm room only held two. We’ll have to figure out what to do with Captain Wonderful.”</p><p>That got him kicked for his troubles. Much better. “Come on,” Billy shook his head at Tommy. “With the pensions we’ll get from this and the sponsorships we’ll be able to sign? Cereal boxes alone will pay for a decent apartment. Or two, so it’ll be just like now, except with better lighting and more wardrobe options.”</p><p>“Ehhhh, maybe.” Tommy stretched as demonstrably as he could and locked his hands behind his head, leaning back against the concrete wall. “I wouldn’t want you twerps hampering my bachelor lifestyle.”</p><p>The look Billy gave him and the tangible undercurrent of amusement that flooded the space between them meant that he knew Tommy was full of shit. But what would that future look like, really? A place of his own, maybe across the hall from Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb so they’d be within easy reach when he- when <em>they</em> needed <em>him</em>, but not up each other’s noses all the time. Not like now.</p><p>But with someone? Was there a person on the planet other than his co-pilots who could put up with his bullshit for any length of time? History suggested that was a big fat no. Still. The idea of knowing someone would be around for stupid TV marathons and midnight coffee runs was starting to sound more appealing.</p><p>He really was getting old and boring. And who was to say Darcy would even be into that anyway? Speaking of which- Tommy pushed himself to his feet, crumpling up the wax paper from his terrible sandwich and tossing it over the railing. It fell the sixty feet to the floor and landed squarely in Stark’s open toolbox. “Come on. We’ve got Connpod testing to deal with. Teddy’s going to meet us at J-tech.”</p><p>Billy ignored the hand that Tommy offered him, rising to his feet only slightly less smoothly than his twin. “What did you do with your cadets?”</p><p>Tommy grinned. “Sent them to David. They’re bugging him in LOCCENT. If he thinks the training project’s worthwhile, <em>he</em> can deal with them for the next few hours.”</p><p>“Are you guys okay? You used to be tighter, BC.” Billy frowned at him.</p><p>“BC?”</p><p>“Before Coma.”</p><p>“I used to be tighter with a lot of people ‘BC.’ It wasn’t just you who lost a year, pipsqueak.” Tommy started moving away from the conversation, taking the steps up toward JTech two at a time.</p><p>Following behind, Billy frowned at him and for once, didn’t have a snide comment.</p>
<hr/><p>Tommy’d had the faint hope that he could ditch the guys or distract them enough to have a few minutes with Darcy before the testing started, but that didn’t happen. Teddy joined them as they headed into the lab that had been set up next to Nate’s, his hair still wet from his post-workout shower. He shook his head vigorously when Tommy needled him, sending drops flying everywhere like the world’s biggest golden lab. It was good, this feeling of ease, and he hung on to it without examining it too closely.</p><p>They were laughing when they piled into the room, all three of them moving in that synchronized way that Tommy barely noticed anymore—not until someone else’s reaction made him stop and reassess. Because Darcy’s face went through a funny cycle of emotions, from confusion to understanding to something that looked like worry-? But she didn’t have anything to worry <em>about</em>, not that he knew of, so he had to be reading her wrong. It sure as hell wouldn’t be the first time.</p><p>“Good afternoon, sit down, don’t touch anything,” Dr. Foster instructed them, and Tommy caught Billy’s raised eyebrow at the same time as Teddy’s head swivelled to give him a mischievous grin.</p><p>“Why are you assholes looking at me?” Tommy fired back, his grin a mirror image of Teddy’s. “Teddy’s the one who likes pushing buttons.”</p><p>“And you’re so innocent,” Teddy snorted.</p><p>Billy nodded. “Remember the thing-”</p><p>“-yup. And then there was the time-”</p><p>“Fuck off, that was one-hundred-percent Cassie’s fault. And Nate’s,” he added belatedly, trying for a distraction. Saying her name still hurt, a scabbing in his heart over muscle and bone that hadn’t fully healed. Maybe never would. Billy grabbed his hand as he passed by en route to one of the empty chairs, squeezing it tight.</p><p>
  <em>Sympathy, empathy, shared grief about a death that hadn’t been pointless but felt less and less meaningful with every new kaiju coming through the Breach.</em>
</p><p>“It did, you know.”</p><p>Mean something? “Maybe,” Tommy replied, unsure.</p><p>“Because that’s not creepy at all,” Darcy muttered under her breath as she approached, three pons rigs in her hands. “It’s not even finishing each other’s sentences, it’s like… like <em>telepathy</em>, which is a thing that doesn’t exist.”</p><p>Teddy shrugged in that amiable, comforting way that usually got everybody on-side. “You get used to it.”</p><p>“Maybe you guys do.” Darcy poked Tommy in the shoulder and nudged him toward the empty chair to Billy’s left. Foster was messing around with her holograms and screens, so Tommy took a second to make a nuisance out of himself. He slid an arm around Darcy’s waist, his hand flat against the small of her back. She arched into his touch, it felt like an accident, but the faint intake of breath definitely hadn’t been. Her hair smelled of strawberries when he tucked his face into it, and he breathed her in gladly.</p><p>“My room tonight?” Tommy offered, low enough that she’d be the only one to hear it.</p><p>Darcy slipped away from his touch, draping the pons rig and its cables over his extended hand instead. “Maybe,” she teased, her eyes flashing at him in a way that meant she’d be there.</p><p>Grinning, Tommy flopped down into the hard plastic chair and spun it in a circle before starting to settle the stiff neural-connection device down over his forehead and neck.</p><p>“This will take about ten minutes,” Foster declared, apparently satisfied with the coloured lights flashing on her readouts and displays. “We’ll take a baseline reading and then a series of stimulus tests with the neural spikes. We’ll be using the data from this session to recalibrate Magnus Echo’s new Conn-Pod inputs, so take it seriously. Please,” she muttered half under her breath with an exasperated sigh. “For once, I just want one of you to take this seriously.”  </p><p>She flipped the switch and Tommy fell into the drift, <em>ran</em> into it headlong and joyous. Darcy leaned over Tommy to adjust the pons setup, half-real in front of him through the hazy blue-green-red spectrum of driftspace. Her hair brushed his face, her breasts against his shoulder, and the delicious memory bubbled up despite the bad timing.</p><p>
  <em>Sweat beading between her breasts, the salt bursting through the lingering taste of mangos on his tongue</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Dark curls falling around him, a sweet-scented curtain blocking out the world; it’s only them, they’re the only things that matter</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Safe, he’s safe inside her, safe in the centre of her attention, danger in the flames licking up the base of his spine</em>
</p><p><em>A flash memory within a memory, images of Billy and Teddy at Wanda’s breakfast table,<br/>
cuddling and sleepy in the early morning light—do I want this? Why am I thinking about this </em>now<em>?</em></p><p>
  <em>Darcy trembling with the rush of pleasure, his own body chasing hers, never far behind-</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Have I done enough to earn the right to want?</em>
</p><p>Tommy locked down the rush of half-real image and memory, slammed doors on the pieces of his private life that he was still allowed to keep for himself. He could feel laughter in the drift, warm and caring, accepting and hopeful, but still an intrusion-</p><p>“Fuck off,” Tommy snapped, and heard his own voice in the real world, distant and quieter than the voices in his head.</p><p>“I think it’s cute,” Teddy offered, also in his outside voice.</p><p>
  <span class="driftTeddy">~I’m glad you’re happy. You deserve it.~ </span>
</p><p>A snort came from Billy on his other side, and a vivid mental image of exactly how little Billy had enjoyed coming along for that particularly heterosexual ride. But the undertones were tinged with that same smugly saccharine pride he always had when he thought Tommy was giving in to his worldview.</p><p>
  <span class="driftTommy">~I can still punch you in the drift, asshole.~ </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="driftBilly">~You’re just mad because I was right.~ </span>
</p><p>“If you want him to actually punch you, that’s definitely the way to go about it,” Teddy laughed.</p><p>Billy snorted again. “Whatever, I can take him.”</p><p>“Whatever you guys are arguing about in there, knock it off,” Dr. Foster chided them. “Baseline synchronization’s all over the place.” Tommy pulled his awareness further out of the all-encompassing three-way mental link. Darcy stood against the wall with her arms folded, watching them. How much of the conversation had been out loud and how much in the depths of driftspace? More of the latter than the former, he assumed, or <em>she’d</em> be lining up to punch him before Billy got the chance.</p><p>“Tell Billy to stop being a <em>pain in my ass</em> and I’ll consider it.”</p><p>
  <span class="driftTeddy"> ~It’s not <em>your</em> ass he’s a pain in-~</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="driftBilly">~Teddy holy SHIT you can’t say things like that~</span>
</p><p>Foster frowned. “Consider it all you like, but I need these readings if you ever intend to pilot Magnus Echo again.”</p><p>“Yeah, I’m not so sure they’re talking to you.”</p><p>
  <span class="driftTeddy">~He gave us serious TMI on Darcy and him, I can get my own back.~</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="driftTommy">~You both suck, so hard.~</span>
</p><p>“Well, technically <em>yes</em>-” Teddy replied and Billy yelped in anguish.</p><p>
  <span class="driftTommy">~I hope you realize the depths of how much I hate you right now.~</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="driftTeddy">~You love us.~</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="driftBilly">~He doesn’t have a choice.~</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="driftTommy">~I regret ever waking you up.~</span>
</p><p>“Technically, nothing,” Foster replied testily, and Tommy had to backtrack again to figure out what she might have been replying to. “Actually, really. So now would be a good time to-”</p><p>“Focus,” Tommy interrupted, kicking sideways and landing a decent hit on Billy’s shin, well below his chronically achy knee. “Got it, doc. Staying on task, starting now.”</p><p>Ignoring the aura of smug coming off his co-pilots, he tried his best to clear his head and think about piloting. Sitting still and concentrating on one thing when nothing else was going on around him—that had never been Tommy’s strong suit. He did his best, but even when Foster was pleased with them and let them go for the day, Darcy’s smile hadn’t returned.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Can you get dumped if you're not officially dating? Asking for a friend. Or, the chapter where Tommy strikes out twice in a row.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>From: Thaddeus Ross (desk of)</p><p>To: Thomas Maximoff</p><p>Subject: Overdue reports</p><p>Ref:</p><p>SECNAV M-5521.37</p><p>DoD M-5902.01</p><p>SECPPDC 098/10</p><p>MARADMIN 69/420</p><p> </p><p>General Ross has requested an update on the cadets who were assigned to your division as of 11-02-2019. Those reports are required as per the above references, and must be remitted in triplicate prior to commencement of Phase 2 testing (see [redacted]).</p><p>Note that the cadets must be made ready for a three-day course at the Groom Lake Facility commencing 11-18-19. Transport will arrive at 0600 hours on that day. Please remit reports in full-</p><p> </p><p><em>Blah blah, thanks for your service, we’ll wipe our asses with the paperwork once you’ve finished filling it out. </em>Tommy slammed his computer closed and toppled forward to rest his head against the cool tabletop in the cafeteria, groaning into empty air.</p><p>“Problems?” It was David’s voice behind him, cool and calm, an oasis of strength in a sea of utter disaster. He was somewhere behind Tommy and to the right, and Tommy turned in that direction as he sat up.</p><p>“The level of bureaucracy in this system is unreal,” he complained, an opening salvo. “It’s bad enough that I have to wrangle the cadets, now I actually have to write <em>reports</em> on all of them. What the hell am I going to say? ‘The teenagers you sent to me are, amazingly enough, teenagers, they hate each other and me, and your project is a shitshow, hope you weren’t relying on this for continued funding’?”</p><p>“It’s a start, but you might want to go a little lighter on the cursing,” David’s reply was filled with dry amusement. “I’ve met Ross, and neither he nor his attaché have much of a sense of humour.”</p><p>Tommy sat his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand, ignoring the bustle of people entering and leaving the caf through the door behind David. “What would it take to bribe you to do these for me?” he asked hopefully, knowing full well that the answer would be-</p><p>David, bursting into laughter. That was a little more extreme than Tommy had predicted, but hey. “That’s a no, hunh?”</p><p>“That’s a not a chance in hell. Good luck with those.” David’s smile twisted in a funny way Tommy couldn’t identify, and he left Tommy alone with his misery. Tommy watched him go; did David have his uniform slacks tailored? Because off-the-rack anything shouldn’t fit that well. </p><p>Whatever. David was gone and Tommy called up the attached paperwork—the reams and reams of attached paperwork—and flipped through the files glumly. He had reports to write, apparently, and no-one was planning on saving him from himself.</p>
<hr/><p>“Okay,” Tommy began, looking from the paperwork in front of him to the cadet sitting across the table. “What’re your thoughts about how this is going so far? Are there any of the others that I should recommend to be your co-pilot?”</p><p>“Man, Trini’s super-hot. But she’s also super-likely to stab me in my sleep. Which is hot too, don’t get me wrong. So like, that’d be cool.”</p><p>-</p><p>“If you pair me off with Zach, I’m going to… I don’t know. But it sure as hell won’t be pretty. Kim’s cool, though. You know. For a popular girl.</p><p>“…And she smells good. But I didn’t say that out loud, and you can’t prove it to anyone.”</p><p>-</p><p>“Trini and I work the best together out of everyone, I think. I’d be able to focus better if we could actually get some sleep. It’s not the hours, and it’s not the jetlag anymore, I just can’t seem to stay asleep in the barracks here. I don’t want to complain, but it’s weird.”</p><p>…</p><p>“Can you tell me how many of the others are trying to use this as some kind of pick-up opportunity?”</p><p>-</p><p>“Given the outcomes of the series of tests we’ve been undergoing with Dr. Selvig, and the statistical unlikelihood of three perfect matches coming out of a scenario such as ours, I have a problem with being forced to predict how anything will come out. <em>Well</em>, I mean. It’s going to come out somehow, but ending <em>well </em>would be better. If I had to pick? Jason. He’s the only one on the team who explains his jokes.”</p><p>-</p><p>Jason Scott held his gaze without blinking. “Isn’t that supposed to be <em>your</em> job?”</p><p>-</p><p>By the time Tommy had gotten around to Tommie Oliver, he was about ready to pitch the tablet through the nearest available window. The cadets weren’t more relaxed, either around each other or around him. If anything they were getting more and more stressed out, Hart’s nails bitten down to the quick even as she complained about broken sleep and weird nightmares.</p><p>Something wasn’t right, something more than the usual bureaucratic bullshit that surrounded these kinds of projects, but Tommy couldn’t even begin to put his finger on what it might be. “So your guys are all looking seriously twitchy,” he opened the conversation as Oliver took her seat across the table, abandoning the previous line of questioning. If any of them was going to trust him enough to give him a straight answer, it was probably going to be her. “Wanna tell me what’s actually going on?”</p><p>Tommie frowned, drawing her finger through a sheen of condensation on the cafeteria table. “I’m not entirely sure,” she confessed. “None of this has been what any of us expected, except maybe for the chances to hang out with the pit crews and get some hands-on experience with the jaegers. Dr. Selvig has been mix-and-matching us like he’s got a formula or a flowchart in his mind, and none of us are sleeping well. The blood tests and injections are-”</p><p>Tommy cut her off. “The what and the who?”</p><p>She met his eyes, and he really saw the dark circles underneath for the first time. Annoyingly, a flare of protective annoyance shot up inside him. “The iron shots, or whatever it is that Dr. Stern’s been giving all of us. They’re supposed to be to help with the exhaustion, apparently, but I don’t think they’re doing any good.”</p><p>“Why would all six of you be anemic suddenly?” Tommy wondered aloud. “Did Faiza sign off on it?”</p><p>“We haven’t seen Dr. Hussein since intake, only Dr. Sterns,” Tommie replied and that didn’t make any sense either. The cadets had standing appointments, something to do with running EEGs, and Tommy had been too grateful for the scheduled break to bother looking into it. “And the weird dreams—they’ve been getting worse ever since the first time.”</p><p>These were his cadets, dammit. If anyone was up to weird hazing rituals, it was supposed to be <em>him</em>. “That’s really strange,” Tommy admitted, and was it relief that he saw in Tommie Oliver’s eyes?  Had she really assumed he wouldn’t take her seriously?</p><p>Probably, yeah. And also, he probably deserved that. “I’ll look into it. I don’t know this Dr. Sterns guy, but Faiza’s got a soft spot for me. I’ll get you answers by the time you guys are back from your trip to Area 51.” And if Faiza wasn’t willing to tell him, he knew someone else who had his thumb on the pulse of the entire Shatterdome. As long as David didn’t see this as Tommy asking David to do his homework for him again.</p>
<hr/><p>Asking Faiza what was up with the cadets would have been easier if the Shatterdome’s Chief Medical Officer was actually on base. <em>Called back to Alaska for a consult</em>, that was what the new nurse at the infirmary told him, but the timing didn’t do much to soothe his naturally suspicious nature. Between her sudden need to be elsewhere and the cadets heading off to Area 51 in Nevada that afternoon for the next three days, Tommy was at loose ends and finding himself less excited about the freedom than he’d imagined.</p><p>“Very weird,” Teddy had agreed with him over breakfast, which also wasn’t a good sign. When Tommy’s much more grounded, <em>sensible </em>co-pilot went along with one of his rants without trying to course-correct, something was definitely in the wind.</p><p>He sent a couple of emails Faiza’s way, but either she wasn’t getting them or she didn’t feel like answering, because an hour later there was still nothing from her in his inbox. Maybe he was expecting too quick a turnaround. If he didn’t hear back from her by the end of the day, Tommy reasoned with himself, then the next sensible thing to do would be to take Teddy up on his offer to bug some of his old chain of command. Marshal Hill knew just about everything that went down in the PPDC, by the end of the cadets’ little field trip she’d have gotten a sense of them as well, and Teddy had both an existing professional relationship with her and the kind of supernaturally charming smile that got women eating out of the palm of his hand.</p><p>Tommy leaned back in his chair and drummed on his desk with a pair of pens, contemplating his next move. The door chimed before he had to make any real decisions, and he opened it with a wave of his hand over the keypad.</p><p>“Tom?” Darcy stuck her head inside the door, followed a moment later by the rest of her, and wasn’t that just the perfect distraction? He spun his chair all the way around and bounced out of it, ready to sweep her off her feet—metaphorically or literally, lady’s choice—but the expression on her face didn’t leave a lot of room for flirting.</p><p>“What’s up, hot stuff?” he asked, stepping aside to let her in to his room. The small frown on her face didn’t let up, and when she leaned on the edge of his desk, she folded her arms across her chest like a ward. Or armour. Tommy was in trouble for something, and honest to God, he had no idea why.</p><p>“Can we talk? Have you got a minute?”</p><p>Tommy’s heart <em>didn’t</em> sink, because that would mean that somewhere between the club and now he’d gotten invested, and that wasn’t his style.</p><p><em>Oh really? Then explain why you still care about Kitty, or Lisa, or Kate—</em>he told his inner voice to put a sock in it.</p><p>“For you? Always,” he said instead of saying anything snide, dropping back into his chair—backwards, this time, so that he could rest his arms on the back and there was a semi-solid barrier between himself and whatever bad news Darcy was about to lay on him. A terrifying thought hit him and he gestured nervously in the general direction of her abdomen. “You’re not about to tell me that you’re knocked up, are you? Because I might need more than a minute to freak out if that’s the case.”</p><p>Darcy shook her head vehemently, eyes wide. “No! Not that I know of.” She hesitated for a second, looked over his shoulder at the wall and her fingertips tapped against each other like she was counting something off in her head. “No,” she said again, more convincingly this time, and he sagged with relief. “This isn’t about that. It’s about the thing yesterday. The drift test with your team.”</p><p>“Okay?” Tommy asked, and now he really wasn’t clear on what he had done or what he was going to need to apologize for. Because it had been a pretty normal pons test, his guys in his head giving him shit, exasperated scientists on the outside doing whatever they did. “What about it?”</p><p>She worried at her lip, biting it as she paused in thought, and the vulnerability in the gesture made him want to jump up from the chair and hug her, or kiss her until the frown vanished entirely. “What’s it like, in there?” she asked, and he was going to have to give up on trying to figure her out and just answer the questions as they came.</p><p>“It’s-” Tommy considered his options, then shrugged. “… hard to explain. The neural bridge is like this little electric shock in your spine, and then it mashes your brain sideways into someone else’s. You’re in this weird space halfway between the real world and somewhere else, and to make the sync work you have to figure out how to let your guard down just enough to know what they’re planning to do without chasing their memories down the rabbit hole.”</p><p>“Where you see everything that they know, and they know everything about you,” she prompted, still frowning at him.</p><p>“Not like that,” he objected, getting an awful hunch of where this conversation was going. “It’s not some core-dump download. It’s fuzzy and fragmented. Like walking through a dream. Or…flashes. Bits and pieces of experiences and thoughts, whatever’s going through their mind at the time. And the more you drift with someone the more you learn how to keep your junk separate.”</p><p>“Like you did yesterday?” she asked, and yeah. That was what he was worried about. Was there a way to spin that which wouldn’t make the whole conversation worse? “Because try as I might, I can only think of one subject that would fit the little bits of conversation you guys decided to share with the room. Look, Tommy… you volunteered to give up your privacy when you enlisted, but I didn’t.”</p><p>That was unfair, and the dread started to claw at Tommy’s gut. He wasn’t any good at stopping shitstorms before they got bad; usually he was the one causing them. So he had no good ideas about how to derail the one that was currently inbound. “Come on. There aren’t a lot of people who don’t know that we’re hooking up. Certainly not anyone who reads gossip columns, ‘cause I know we made a splash at the club the other night.”</p><p>“That’s… not really the point, is it?” Darcy shook her head and he <em>felt</em> the temperature in the room dropping as she laid the anvil down. “The point is that I’m getting out now, before I get attached. It was fun, Tommy. And thanks for the dates, and the drinks. But I don’t think I’m game for half the strike team having intimate knowledge of what it feels like to be with me.”</p><p>“It’s not like that,” Tommy objected, the accusation rankling. “They only see details if I show them, and believe me, my <em>very gay</em> brother and his boyfriend are massively uninterested in my sex life.” That was a lie, considering the accidental indecent exposure yesterday, but it wasn’t like Teddy, the world’s nicest guy, would ever cause Darcy problems. And Billy definitely wouldn’t, or—brother or not—Tommy would gleefully put his head through a plate glass window.</p><p>“I haven’t ever drifted with either of the other teams,” Tommy kept on trying to explain, despite none of it appearing to have any impact on Darcy’s mood. “It’s not like we run around jamming pons headsets on each other for funsies. Your secrets are safe with me.”</p><p>Darcy only shook her head. What made it even worse was the fact that she wasn’t yelling at him. She was just quiet and a little hurt, and looking at that wounded expression on his face made him feel like the world’s worst jerk. “That’s not what I saw yesterday. I like you, dude. Beyond the muscles and all that—I like you as a person. And the sex was off the chain. But I didn’t sign on for this.</p><p>“You guys live on a totally different planet, you know that right? The things that are so normal and boring for you are still <em>really fucking weird</em> for the rest of us. And then add on the whole ‘running headfirst into almost certain death’ part of your job, and everything else that comes with being a celebrity—my <em>mom</em> called me because my nightclub hookup got printed in the newspaper in <em>Nebraska</em>. I don’t want to deal with a billion questions I can’t answer when I go home for Christmas.”</p><p>Silence fell then, her arms wrapped more closely around herself and her dark curls spilling over her shoulders.</p><p>“I get it,” he replied as though from a distance, fingers and toes cold for no apparent reason. “I hate it, and wish I could explain how different it is from what you’re imagining. But I get it.”</p><p>“No hard feelings?” she asked, and the aching void inside him wanted to take major exception to that.</p><p>He had to be an adult. Letting any hint of neediness leak out now would be akin to emotional blackmail, which he was not going to do. So Tommy did what he always did when things got too close for comfort, and turned it into a joke. “No hard feelings. Well, a couple of hard feelings-” he leered, and she rolled her eyes.</p><p>“Seriously, Darce,” Tommy continued, dropping the tough-guy act. “Think about it? Whatever you’re imagining happened, it wasn’t that bad. The media can suck a bag of dicks, and we could be pretty amazing together. If you change your mind-”</p><p>She just shook her head and pushed herself to stand up straight. “We’ll always have Paris, hero.” Darcy leaned over and brushed a goodbye kiss against his lips, one that he was too frozen to take any kind of advantage of. She let herself out of his room and the door closed.</p><p>Tommy collapsed over the back of his chair, a puppet with severed strings. He swallowed hard against the bile and the sourness that flooded upward from his stomach. He should be used to rejection by now, to the gut-punch and the knife twist that came with it, the hollow ache that tried to turn him inside out to make it stop.</p><p>He could drink to make it go away, but it was way too early in the day for that. </p><p>
  <strong>Tommy: where r u&gt; I need to beat something up.</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Billy: weight room. Kwoon in 5?</strong>
</p><p>Thank God for little brothers. Tommy grabbed his gym bag on the way out the door, wishing for a moment that sliding doors could still be slammed. Sweat. Sweat and working out until his muscles screamed, then beating the shit out of Billy. That would keep him busy and his mind off his total failure to be a functional human being for at least a couple of hours.</p><p>After that—that would be a problem for future-Tommy.</p>
<hr/><p>Future-Tommy had no better ideas than past-him did, he was just a lot more tired. Physically and existentially, though he’d vehemently deny the latter to anyone who asked. He had a list of things still to do before he collapsed for the night, so at least that would keep him too busy and distracted to stress out about his many personal failings. Top of that list, since Faiza hadn’t deigned to reply to any of his messages, was to find the one guy on base who knew everything about everything. Tommy was useless without a robot wrapped around him, but David was a certified genius and had little electronic fingers dipping into every data stream going.</p><p>“Not every one,” David replied when Tommy said that aloud. “Lots of them, yes,” he conceded with a faint smile, moving the remnants of his lunch off the dayroom couch to give Tommy somewhere to sit. “But definitely not all.”</p><p>Tommy flopped gratefully over the overstuffed arm and landed semi-gracefully on the cushion next to David, a sense of… not peace, but something a little more <em>settled</em>, pushing away his frustrations from the rest of the day. David had that effect on people. Or at least on Tommy, if Tommy counted as people. Maybe it was the lingering aftereffects of always having him there in the drift when Magnus Echo fought, a warm voice in his ear that meant someone out there cared.</p><p>“That’s better than I’ve got, which is a bunch of unread emails and General Ross’s secretary getting up my nose about my reports. But David,” Tommy frowned, the darker of his suspicions starting to swirl around inside and make his inborn cynicism worse. “If Ross’s department is up to something, there’s no way in hell I want to send that office <em>more</em> data on those kids. What background can you dig up on this Dr. Sterns? And General Ross. Something hinky is up. I can avoid his secretary until the cadets get back, but after that I have to produce <em>something</em>.”</p><p>David gave him a look that seemed more appraising than helpful, and Tommy’s sense of internal discomfort grew. After a beat, David nodded, glanced at his buzzing phone, and that feeling of being <em>seen too much</em> vanished. “I’ll see what I can do,” he promised, and from David that was as good as victory already. He didn’t take a call but did check a text that flashed up on his screen, and when he swiped it aside a photo popped up on his lockscreen. A photo of David, his arm around a pretty young woman. They looked cozy, her hand on his chest and his chin on top of her head, both of them grinning at the camera.</p><p>
  <em>Is she why he turned me down?</em>
</p><p>Fair, really. Tommy wouldn’t date himself if he had other options either. But he’d been staring at the screen a beat too long and now David was giving <em>him</em> a look, so Tommy sank against the cushions and grinned. “Girlfriend? Isn’t she a bit young for you?”</p><p>
  <em>See? I don’t care.</em>
</p><p>He didn’t anticipate David’s scowl as he stuffed his phone away. “That’s my kid sister, Tom. Emphasis on the ‘kid.’”</p><p>“That’s not right. Kim’s, like, ten years old.” Tommy held out a hand parallel to the floor, trying to remember how little David’s sister had been the one time he’d seen her, the first year he’d been at the Shatterdome.</p><p>“She grew up. That tends to happen over time.” David’s reply was dry, but maybe Tommy’d gotten brownie points for remembering Kim at all.</p><p>“Dude. Way to make a guy feel old. Is she local now?” he asked with a grin, because it was the kind of thing people expected from him. Not seriously, obviously. She was David’s <em>sister</em>, for one, and for another she had to be all of what, sixteen? Tommy was many things, some of them curse words, but he wasn’t a creep.</p><p>“Not a chance. She’s at school on the east coast.”</p><p>“Smart move. East coast… Yale or Harvard?” Tommy guessed, and got a slightly softer look from David in return, which was almost as good as a smile. How long had it been since they’d just sat and talked about stuff that had nothing to do with kaiju or jaegers or cadets or Billy…? He couldn’t remember the last time, and that thought jabbed him somewhere uncomfortable.</p><p>David cocked his head like he was thinking, or taking Tommy’s measure. “Why would you guess those two? What about Kim screams ‘Ivy League’?”</p><p>Tommy shrugged. “You’re a super-achiever, stands to reason she would be too.”</p><p>It was the right answer apparently, because after a beat David grinned and conceded. “…MIT, early admission.”</p><p>“Called it.” He cracked his knuckles and slung his hands behind his head, kicking at the ottoman until he could drag it close enough with his toes to rest his feet on top. He could slouch into the corner of the couch and see David better that way, the casually opened button at his throat, the dark evening scruff along the line of his jaw, his mouth as he grabbed his can of pop and then took a swig, eyes closing for a half-second with the movement. It was a nice view, and as different from Darcy as he could get.</p><p><em>Or had Darcy been as different from David—</em>that was a there he wasn’t going. Not when David was finally un-mad at him again and Darcy had just broken his heart.</p><p><em>Not broken, just dented. Maybe ‘gently bruised.’ </em>He’d seen it coming, and it wasn’t like they’d been together for long. Did it even count as ‘together’ if it was a new land-speed record for crashing and burning? Less than a week from hook-up to fuckup. Either way, he didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter. Time to move forward.</p><p>“You went to college out east, didn’t you?” David asked him, turning to face Tommy properly, settling one foot on his other knee. And he actually seemed interested in the answer, which caught Tommy slightly off-guard.</p><p>“And here I figured you had all our personnel files memorized,” Tommy teased.</p><p>That got him rolled eyes, and if he squinted, there might be some fondness in there. “Please. I do have better things to do.”</p><p>“Pfft. As if,” Tommy replied loftily, and David snickered. Then, because David had asked and deserved a real answer, “Billy and I were at NYU. We transferred to the Academy when the first call went out for pilots.” And hadn’t <em>that</em> been an eye-opener, in so many more ways than one. They’d figured they’d be drift-compatible, whatever that meant, but the way they’d learned to move together, always knowing exactly where Billy was going to be, how easy it had been to become a perfect two-man gestalt—</p><p>“What did you study?” David asked, the warm lamplight catching a gleam off the can in his hand as he brought it to his lips again.</p><p>“Billy was in psych at first then switched to education. I was taking electrical engineering.” David reacted to <em>that</em>, his Adam’s apple bobbing convulsively as he swallowed and snorted at the same time, a coughing fit grabbing him. Tommy whacked him on the back and the cough subsided. Tommy was very careful not to let his hand linger, no matter how warm David felt. “What? I’m not just a pretty face. I know things. Just didn’t have a chance to get into the really cool stuff before the apocalypse started.”</p><p>“…K-day derailed a lot of plans. Will you go back?” He had a look in his eye now like he was processing data, refining his sample set and recalculating Tommy while they sat there. Whether it was revising his opinion up or down, Tommy couldn’t be certain.</p><p>“Sure, when the war’s over, assuming I’m still alive.” It was a big assumption but whatever. They’d done okay so far, except that one time. “I’ll have one hell of an edge in robotics classes.”</p><p>David nodded along, a grin curling up his lips when he added, “and you’ll have teaching experience. You could pick up a few classes to TA.”</p><p>“Yeah, no,” Tommy scoffed. “Teaching’s Billy’s thing. I’m too antisocial.”</p><p>“<em>You</em>? Mr. Social Butterfly?”</p><p>“Partying’s a <em>totally</em> different thing than talking to people. It’s a great way to get <em>out</em> of talking to people.”</p><p>“Fair. I suppose I should be flattered you’re taking this much time out of your day for me,” David replied, in a tone so dry that Tommy’s head whipped around to stare at him—only to find him grinning. David was teasing him again, and when had that become a thing that they’d lost? He couldn’t remember that timeline either.</p><p>“I like talking to you,” Tommy shrugged, only surprised to find himself saying that out loud. “And teaching’s a whole different kind of interaction. They want you to <em>know</em> things, and know how to explain them.</p><p>“And this new program is a shitshow, David, honest to God. Ross and his cronies want plug-and-play pilots, and they want me to train up a bunch of strangers together and make it so everyone can drift with everybody else.” The frustration bubbled over now that someone was actually listening to him vent, and the words kept coming as his sense of injustice flared to life. “But it doesn’t work that way! It <em>can’t</em> work that way. You can’t just arbitrarily decide that you’re going to let some random into your brain and have it go well. It makes-”</p><p>“It makes <em>you</em> less special if everyone can do it?” David suggested, and how could he be so far off-base?</p><p>“Fuck off,” Tommy snapped, because it took aggressively trying <em>not</em> to get it to wind up so badly wrong. “It risks the connection. There’s a lot more to drifting than just being able to tolerate someone. Civilians may not get it, but that doesn’t make it messed up or… or wrong, somehow. It’s entirely possible to be tight with my twin and his infinitely better half without it being some kind of sign that I’m not available for other human contact. I’m perfectly capable of keeping my private life private, even from those two goons.”</p><p>He’d gone off on a ranting tangent, only realizing it when he noticed David was frowning at him again. “Tom, where’s this coming from?”</p><p>Tommy groaned, rubbing his face with his hands. It didn’t help his focus any, and it wasn’t like he could make up a convincing lie. “Darcy broke up with me. She can’t handle the idea that Billy is in my brain and she isn’t.”</p><p>David snorted, resting his head on his hand and two fingers covering his lips. Hiding a smile? Or trying not to let Tommy see a judgemental frown? “I sure as hell hope that isn’t the way you phrased it to her, or I understand exactly why she did it.”</p><p>“You’re a true bro, thanks for having my back. No, for once I didn’t get dumped because I did or said something dumb,” Tommy fired off, but he couldn’t keep up the level of intensity required to stay mad. “She’s just not into dating a ranger. Neural bridges freak her out.” And that was all there was to say about that.</p><p>David looked pensive, and it was a good look on him. Tommy had to force himself not to stare, watching the air beside David instead of the man himself. “It is weird, when you think about it,” David mused aloud. “Especially for those of us on the outside looking in. Rangers…you’ve got a connection the rest of us can’t begin to fathom. Even those of you who aren’t partners, you’re in on the secret.”</p><p>“It is a big thing. But it’s not the only thing. I’m not just Billy’s brother, Teddy’s co-pilot. Magnus’s bitch. I can be my own person if I want to be.” It rankled, and he folded his arms in defiance. First Darcy, now David—he should have stuck with Kate’s offer. He might be a third wheel for the rest of his life, but at least she <em>understood</em>.</p><p>And wasn’t that exactly what David was trying to drum into his head? Ouch. It was worth thinking about, but not now.</p><p>“It doesn’t change the fact that your co-pilots <em>are</em> always going to know you better than anyone else, even a girlfriend. In some ways, maybe even better than you know yourself,” he added pointedly.  </p><p>“They don’t know everything,” Tommy objected, and why did David have to push the subject? He could just as easily have given Tommy grief about his shitty romantic life, then moved on. “I’m perfectly capable of blocking them out of things that I want to keep to myself.” Most of the time, anyway.</p><p>“Blocking Teddy out was one of the big reasons things went to hell last spring,” David just <em>had</em> to remind him. “But now that you guys are fully synced? Name me one thing Teddy doesn’t know about you.” The prickling irritation on the back of Tommy’s neck dug in harder. “Billy doesn’t count, twins are different. This is just the co-pilot factor.”</p><p>He wanted examples? Fine, Tommy could give him examples. Examples of something David knew but Teddy didn't, for one—</p><p>“America’s isn’t the only dick I’ve taken,” Tommy replied bluntly, eyebrow arched. <em>Could’ve been you, but you didn’t want it. </em>(He was being unfair, had only asked David out super-casually, and once it had been a group thing which probably didn’t count. But that didn’t help the annoying hollow ache from wanting to make David feel a <em>tiny</em> bit sorry. Tommy had never been good at dealing gracefully with rejection.)</p><p>Only David didn’t take the bait, just looking exasperated. “Being into pegging isn’t what I’d call a hugely important secret.”</p><p>“Moving the bar, are we? And way to perpetuate erasure, dude,” Tommy mocked him. “You know it’s not just women.”</p><p>David held himself very, very still. Tommy knew that look. He’d just fucked something up. <em>Two for two, today. Amazing. </em></p><p>“… wait, seriously?”</p><p>David definitely hadn’t known. Which meant what? That he didn’t know Tommy nearly as well as Tommy had imagined, for one. And for the other—that he’d totally missed the parts where Tommy’d been hitting on him?</p><p>Tommy might not be officially out in the media, but that was for very good, important reasons, most of which revolved around Billy. And he’d held things back from Teddy at the beginning out of fear—not of Teddy specifically, but what Teddy represented. Giving him anything personal had felt like a betrayal, pulling out a chair at the table that had always been reserved for Billy alone.</p><p>They’d gotten over that part, in time. But Tommy’d never really found the <em>right</em> time to mention something that was almost certainly never going to be a big issue.</p><p>But David wasn’t just anyone. He’d been in Tommy’s head in every way other than drifting, and had been doing it for years. If anyone figured it out, it should have been him.</p><p>And over the years, Tommy’d definitely flirted. Maybe not as intensely as with people he didn’t work with, but that was a respect thing. He wasn’t about to jump into the Chief LOCCENT Officer’s lap and start unbuttoning things until he was a hundred percent sure the approach was welcome.</p><p>Which it hadn’t been. Despite the carefully-gauged hooks he’d dangled, David’d never once bitten. Fine, no problem—Tommy’d taken the hint, and left well enough alone.</p><p>Now he stared in fascination as David’s face went through a whole new series of emotions. It was like actively watching a total system shutdown and reboot as David processed the new information. Aiming for respect, and plausible deniability had apparently shot Tommy neatly in the foot.</p><p>David was waiting for an answer, and Tommy needed to get the conversation back on track before it devolved into an hour of angry staring. “I’ve had a couple of things.” Tommy shrugged off the details, because they weren’t the important part. “Nothing serious, obviously. College stuff.”</p><p>David nodded and his tight, tense shoulders relaxed as though he understood. “But not since? Some experimenting, and then you decided that you were straight after all.”</p><p>He had not understood.</p><p>“Me? No. I’m bi. But it’s easier to leave things alone, for the most part.” Tommy kept an eye on David as his fingers curled tighter around his pop can. “Gay twin, straight twin—the narrative works, media loves it, doesn’t need explaining and doesn’t invite stupid critiques. Why rock the boat?”</p><p>Why let people know more about him than they needed to? That way led to vulnerability, and inevitably, to pain.</p><p>“That’s not how it works,” David argued, and Tommy wasn’t sure what part he was arguing with. “You aren’t defined by a tabloid narrative, or by your twin-.”</p><p>“No? You define me by my relationships with Billy and Teddy. ‘A triad,’ ‘they know everything you know’—isn’t that what you were <em>just </em>saying? You wanted to know something about me that Teddy didn’t. Now you do. Tom Maximoff sucks dick.”</p><p>He’d known David long enough to pick up on some of his tells, even if they apparently didn’t have the connection Tommy’d thought they did. Him standing up abruptly wasn’t a good sign, for instance, nor was the clipped, precise way he moved as he gathered his things together.</p><p>“The fuck?”</p><p>“I don’t have the energy for this, Tom,” David snapped, everything about him tight and unhappy. “Four years ago maybe we could have had this conversation,” he said cryptically, “but not now.”</p><p>“What does that even mean? It’s okay for you to be bisexual but not me? How does that even work?” Tommy gathered his legs underneath him and popped up on his knees on the couch, getting his head at the same level as David’s as David dumped his leftovers in the garbage can in the corner. His brain whirled, trying to put the puzzle pieces together and ending up with an incomprehensible mess of disconnected thoughts instead. His eyes narrowed at David as one particularly awful explanation hit him, and his mouth ran away with the bitter accusation before he could make the conscious decision not to. “Or is it that you’re still pining for Teddy? Give it up. He’s not available.”</p><p>That got David’s full attention and Tommy basked in the furious intensity of that glare for a beat. <em>Now you see me.</em> “No, I am not pining for <em>Teddy. </em>Do you <em>rehearse</em> being a dick?” David snapped.</p><p>“It’s all natural, but refined through adversity,” Tommy fired back, his insides hollow and filled with knives.</p><p>“You know, I liked the old Tom better. Before you started behaving like an asshole to shove everyone away.” David stalked out of the room, slamming through the door like it was personally offensive to him to be trapped in the dayroom with Tommy for one more second.</p><p>No-one came in after him, and Tommy drew in a ragged breath. He waited, just in case David was going to come back in to yell at him some more. When that didn’t happen, he let go and let himself fall backwards into the couch cushions. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and tried to ride out the waves of anger/guilt/pain/rejection as best he could without giving in to weakness and <em>crying</em>.</p><p><em>I liked the old Tom better, </em>David had said.</p><p>
  <em>You’re not the only one.</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Some backstory, some confessions, and a little snogging. Maybe things are starting to go right for once?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>16 months earlier</strong>
</p>
<p>Tommy sat in Billy’s room, his head in his hands. Billy lay in the infirmary-standard cot, his arms full of tubes, and didn’t move.</p>
<p>Their days were measured by the beep-click, beep-click of the machines keeping Billy alive. Nights were when the lights dimmed in the hall, just enough to give the illusion of passing time. Tommy knew better. He was stuck there, just as Billy was stuck, in the worst game of chicken he’d ever played. But Tommy was stubborn, and Tommy was tenacious. Tommy would not be the one to give up first.</p>
<p>Beep-click.</p>
<p>Footsteps in the hallway didn’t sound like the orderly who came around to check Billy’s vitals and wash his unresponsive body. Not the nurse either, who sometimes brought food for Tommy from the cafeteria along with the refill for Billy’s feeding tube. Those were David’s footsteps, his long stride familiar and at the moment, desperately unwelcome.   </p>
<p>He knew what David was coming to say.</p>
<p>Beep-click.</p>
<p>“Hey,” came the gentle, calm voice from the door. Tommy didn’t look over. He did lift his head, propping his chin in his hands and steepling his fingers in front of his nose, his eyes still fixed on Billy.</p>
<p>David came in even though Tommy hadn’t said he could, came in and sat down in the second chair next to him. “Tommy,” David said, and Tommy closed his eyes against the world. Billy’s barely-audible breathing was drowned out by conversation and he needed to hear it. Needed to be sure something of Billy was still there underneath the endless electronic hum of the machines.</p>
<p>“Tom, <em>please</em>.” David never said things like that, and Tommy turned his head for a quick look, just to see what was wrong with the guy. He looked like hell, but not as bad as Billy did, or Tommy felt.</p>
<p>“What do you want?” Tommy asked, his voice grating and harsh from lack of use. David didn’t flinch at the harsh noise.</p>
<p>“The last of the candidates will be on base this afternoon.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Hear that, dipshit? You’ve got a deadline. Wake up and save me from this. Wake up. Please wake up.</em>
</p>
<p>“This is your last chance, Tommy,” David kept talking, and this time his nickname hurt to hear. It wasn’t right, that other people were around to say it and Billy wasn’t. “You need this guy. We need this guy, and we need you. Billy’s-”</p>
<p>“Billy’s going to be back,” Tommy snapped. “Maybe no-one else believes in him, but I do.”</p>
<p> David was subdued when he replied. “I didn’t say he wasn’t. But you’re not doing him any favours by putting yourself in time-out. Keep this up and I- <em>we’ll</em> lose you as well.”</p>
<p>The sob caught in Tommy’s throat where he wrestled it back down into obscurity and silence. <em>Maybe I deserve to be lost. </em>He couldn’t say it out loud.</p>
<p>Beep-click.</p>
<p>A hand rested lightly on Tommy’s knee, strong and caring. He wanted to lean into the touch, settle his head on David’s broad shoulder and accept whatever idiotic platitudes and healing strength David had to offer. If he did, if he even flinched that way, his mind and his heart would shatter like the most fragile of glass.</p>
<p>“None of this was your fault, Tom. You’re one of the greatest pilots I’ve ever seen. It’s just that sometimes… sometimes through no fault of anyone’s, the enemy gets a lucky shot.”</p>
<p>“How would you know?” Tom fired back, bleeding on the inside and desperate. He lashed out at David because David would forgive him, David who had brought him home every time…and Billy every time but one. “You say you’re my friend, but you’re telling me that it’s time to replace him? Forget that my brother is in a <em>coma</em> because of me? Fuck off, David. I’m not going to do it. This new guy that you and Carol dug up can go piss up a rope. I don’t need you condescending to me about when it’s time to move on.”</p>
<p>“You know what?” David snapped, so much more brittle than he was supposed to be. He stood, the comforting mental weight of his nearness vanishing like smoke. “A little condescension might be just what you need to hear. I’ve tried, we’ve all <em>tried</em>, Tommy. For <em>months. </em>If you’d rather marinate in your own misery, suit yourself. But you’d be a hell of a lot better off if you’d pull your head out of your ass and show up for the compatibility tests like the professional you’re supposed to be.”</p>
<p>“And if I don’t?”</p>
<p>“If you don’t? And Magnus’s interface can’t be reset to baseline to get rid of the interference from your old synchronizations? Then she gets stripped for parts and the rest goes to Oblivion Bay. That’s not what you want. It’s not what any of us wants.”</p>
<p>Tommy didn’t have a sharp reply for that, only the gnawing despair and the blackness of the void that kept opening underneath his feet. He closed his eyes again to block David out, to find the sound of Billy breathing. If he kept listening for it, then it wouldn’t go away.</p>
<p>Scuffling noises sounded beside him as David rose to his feet. “Be at the kwoon to do the compatibility tests. You need this, Tom. And everyone needs you back in the game.”</p>
<p>“What about you?”</p>
<p>Beep-click.</p>
<p>David’s voice was husky when he replied, soft and hurt and layered with all kinds of things still unspoken. “If you feel like having a friend again…you know where to find me.”</p>
<p>The door closed behind him. Tommy blinked, because there should have been something there to blink away. But like always, his eyes were dry.</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <strong>Present day</strong>
</p>
<p>Tommy woke with a rush and a gasp, the sounds of the infirmary pressing in on him from the edges of sleep until he half-convinced himself that everything from the past year and a half had been the dream. That Billy was still in his coma, and nothing at all had been repaired.</p>
<p>He forced his eyes open and found that the world had indeed changed. He was in his single room, the one that had originally been Teddy’s, his face jammed between the pillow and the wall. The clock glowed <em>1600,</em> and he was still in his uniform. Tommy pushed himself up to sitting, peeling his dog tags off his cheek where they’d stuck themselves during his impromptu nap.</p>
<p>It was <em>now</em>, not then. Billy was awake, Teddy was his other co-pilot, and David was… not exactly thrilled with him anymore. Two points for the present-day situation, one against. This wasn’t the first time he’d had some version of the infirmary dream, especially lately, but it was the first time David had featured so prominently. And that conversation was more than just a figment of an overactive imagination. It was a memory, one that had only surfaced once his dream-self decided to go wandering through old storage.</p>
<p>
  <em>You aren’t the only one who lost a year.</em>
</p>
<p>He shivered, even though the room was warm. What next? Would he start dreaming about the fight again—about Billy covered in blood, his open eyes staring at nothing? Tommy’s head exploding with pain as he tried to move Magnus on his own?</p>
<p>Like magic, like they were drifting and Billy could hear his thoughts, an alert blooped. Billy didn’t wait for Tommy to let him in, the door sliding open a second later. He made himself right at home, pushing Tommy’s legs over to sit down on the bed, his back against the wall. Tommy flipped around to lie on his back, hanging his head off the side and running his feet up the wall to rest by Billy’s shoulders.</p>
<p>Billy was going to make him talk, but the last thing Tommy wanted to talk about were the dreams. “Apparently David didn’t know I was bi.” He opened with that instead, and both felt and heard Billy groan against his side. “What?”</p>
<p>“That explains why there’s a black thundercloud hanging over LOCCENT right now. How did you expect him to know when you never tell anyone?” Billy asked, entirely unreasonably.</p>
<p>“I flirted with him!” Tommy objected, because he had no interest in exploring or explaining why he wanted—had <em>assumed</em>—that David knew him well enough to have figured it out.</p>
<p><em>Teddy hasn’t, and he’s </em>actually<em> in my brain regularly.</em></p>
<p>That was different.</p>
<p>Billy fell silent for a beat like he was digesting that, the gears grinding in his brain loud enough for Tommy to feel them. He was putting pieces together, but thankfully he knew Tommy well enough not to try and make him explain. “When did you flirt with him?” he did ask, frowning down at Tommy.</p>
<p>“Before.” Tommy gestured vaguely in the air towards Billy, the words too thick in his throat to speak into reality. “You know.”</p>
<p>“So… when you were obsessed with Kate?”</p>
<p>“I wasn’t obsessed. It was after she and Chavez hooked up. I used to buy him drinks when we all went out together,” Tommy pointed out. On the rare occasions when any of them had to buy drinks for themselves.</p>
<p>“You bought him drinks because he’s the Chief LOCCENT Officer. Remember that time you got up on the bar at that janky club in WeHo, proclaimed him to be the real hero of the Shatterdome and had the whole place toasting him?”</p>
<p>“He deserved the recognition. <em>And </em>I got him that Cubs jersey, even though the team <em>sucks</em>.”</p>
<p>“And gave it to him the day after the Mets trashed them in a no-hitter. I’ve never seen David come that close to homicide.”</p>
<p>“It was meant to be a nice gesture. Any rational person would see that the Mets are the superior team by far.” Tommy folded his arms defiantly, the gesture probably ruined by the fact that he was hanging half upside down, his hair falling towards the floor.</p>
<p>“It’s still not flirting. Not in a way any <em>rational person</em> would recognize.”</p>
<p>“I asked him to come to the club with me after we took down that last kaiju.”</p>
<p>“Wasn’t that the night you and Darcy fucked in the VIP bathroom?”</p>
<p>“… maybe.”</p>
<p>“And you wonder why he thinks you’re straight,” Billy snorted.</p>
<p>“Shut up.”</p>
<p>“You need to talk to him, and work this out. Work <em>something</em> out, so that things don’t get weird when we deploy again.”</p>
<p>“That’s what you’re worried about, and not your brother’s pain?”</p>
<p>“Of course I worry about you,” Billy was veering uncomfortably close to sincere, squeezing Tommy’s nearest foot and leaning against his knee. “Do you think I don’t? And I know that you’re not nearly as tough on the inside as you like to pretend to be.</p>
<p>“I want you to be happy, dumbass. Whatever that looks like. Ideally, with someone else who gets you. Someone who sees and likes the gross, sticky marshmallow you are under all that burnt charcoal.” Billy poked him gently in the ribs as punctuation.</p>
<p>He wanted to mouth off, make some smart retort, but there weren’t any coming. Instead the next breath he took smelled of disinfectant and hospital cleaner, his ears filling with the distant noise of Billy’s life support system calmly keeping his body alive while his mind was-</p>
<p>—trapped, and trying to communicate, and Tommy hadn’t understood—</p>
<p>
  <em>Failed him I failed him and let everyone else down, head up my own ass for so long that I broke it all to pieces.</em>
</p>
<p>Tommy turned his face in towards Billy’s knee, pressed his forehead tight against Billy’s khaki-covered calf and stayed there. Billy’s hand found his hair, the gentle pressure soothing beyond words. “The fuck is wrong with me?” Tommy asked, his eyes squeezed closed against the world and his brother there to watch his back. “You’re fine, Mom’s fine, everything’s <em>fine</em> for once in our goddamned lives. Why am I getting sloppy now?”</p>
<p>“Maybe <em>because</em> everything’s okay,” Billy suggested, following his jumping train of thought without hesitation. “It’s safe. You can come apart for a while.”</p>
<p>If he asked for forgiveness, Billy wouldn’t understand. But this felt a little bit like redemption might. And he rested there, holding on to that thought, for a long, long time.</p>
<hr/>
<p>He didn’t end up going to dinner in the cafeteria, raiding his stash of dried noodle packages and using the excuse of finishing the cadet reports. The line ‘they’re all going fucking apeshit, and anxiety might be a terminal condition’ had been rewritten to try and sound a little more professional four or five times before he gave up and deleted it altogether. Still, he held off on sending them. The whole process was gnawing at him, and he saved the drafts instead of firing off the files to Ross’s secretary like he was supposed to. There was something else he needed to do.</p>
<p>Tommy ended up in the hall outside David’s quarters again, this time in uniform instead of club wear, no motorcycle jacket—or Darcy—to be seen. Music was playing faintly on the other side, the style of slow, funky jazz that David preferred, and Tommy hesitated before he knocked. What were the odds that David had someone in there?</p>
<p><em>So what if he does? </em>The thought hurt deep down inside his ribcage, even though he had no reason to be jealous. It wasn’t like he and David would ever be a thing. Not before, and certainly not now. <em>He can do what he likes.</em></p>
<p>And if he was busy, Tommy reasoned, he wouldn’t answer the door, so there was no harm in knocking. David wasn’t busy, or at least he came to the door and opened it, and there was no-one behind him in the small staff quarters.</p>
<p>
  <em>Wishing you godspeed, glory / There will be mountains you won't move-</em>
</p>
<p>A frown crossed his face when he saw Tommy, but he reached behind him and muted the music partway through the song. “Ranger.”</p>
<p>“Ouch,” Tommy winced at the cold distance there that he still wasn’t a hundred percent sure that he deserved. Still, he barrelled ahead full-steam despite the rebuke. “That was harsh. And I’m already feeling like shit, so way to twist the knife. I came over to say that yeah, I was being a dick. And I’m sorry. What’re the chances we can forget everything and be friends again?”</p>
<p><em>You know where to find me.</em> That had been in the dream, the resurfacing memory that had been buried for months by his long grey twilight. Had David meant it, or had Tommy finally found the man’s breaking point?</p>
<p>David hesitated and the corkscrew started to burrow its way inside Tommy again, the anxious feeling of bracing for rejection mounting in his chest. “One question first.”</p>
<p>“Anything.”</p>
<p>“I thought we were good friends, before. Why didn’t you tell me, even when I came out to you?”</p>
<p>
  <em>A chilly morning, sitting on the Shatterdome roof and watching the sun rise over the bay after a run, the breeze prickling the sweat drying on his chest and back. David sitting beside him, coffee cup in his hands and the steam curling into the air. “I’m bi,” he’d said, looking more nervous than Tommy’d ever seen him before. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Cool,” Tommy’d said. “Cool,” and “it doesn’t change anything. Not for me.” He’d slung an easy arm around David’s shoulders, assumed the acceptance would be enough to say ‘we’re in this together.’ Assumed David would understand, the way he understood everything else about Tommy. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>It had been so easy, until then.  </em>
</p>
<p>He wasn’t about to let Tommy off the hook. Tommy sighed guiltily and his gaze flickered to David’s face, the hurt lingering there in David’s eyes, the one-sided vulnerability that Tommy hadn’t taken into account when he’d kept his own armour up. “I assumed you already knew.”</p>
<p>“Like you assumed I remembered where you went to college?”</p>
<p>“Something like that. Honestly, I thought that was the reason you said anything in the first place. That and Billy.” Tommy held still, tried not to shift his weight awkwardly, hands jammed in his pants pockets to have something, anything useful to do with them. Any second now, David would yell at him, or say that wasn’t enough-</p>
<p>But then David almost smiled. Only one corner of his mouth turned up wryly, but it was a move in the right direction. “Okay. But I need to preserve this moment—a Tom Maximoff apology? Who knew it was possible?” he took his hand off the doorframe and retreated into his room, like he was inviting Tommy in.</p>
<p>Tommy was pulled in by the vacuum left between them, just into the open doorway and no further. “Not if you’re going to be an ass about it. I take it all back.”</p>
<p>“Too late.” David shook his head, and Tommy felt a grin pulling at his lips, one that matched David’s. “It’s on record now. I should find the security footage and preserve it for posterity.”</p>
<p>“I’m aware of when I’m being a jackass,” Tommy grumbled, but the corkscrew and the pressure in his chest were gone. David hadn’t <em>said</em> that he was forgiven, but he was treating him like he was, so Tommy considered that a battle won. “And I’ll admit it when it’s important enough.”</p>
<p>“I choose to take that as a compliment.” And then it was David’s turn to look awkward about something, micro-expressions racing across his face like he was struggling with himself before calm took over once more. “And yes. Friends again. Weirdly enough, my life starts to feel too quiet when you aren’t bugging me all the time.”</p>
<p>Tommy grinned and shrugged it off. “You can’t be the smartest guy on base and expect not to get bugged about stuff. When you said we should have had that conversation years ago, what did you mean?” he changed conversational lanes abruptly, jumping on the chance to ask the question that had started gnawing at him.</p>
<p>That was probably the wrong thing to ask because David got all wary again, and<em> that</em> had to be important too. Tommy just couldn’t figure out why. “I meant I’m not talking about it.”</p>
<p>“Not ever, or just not now?”</p>
<p>“Not now. Why does it matter?”</p>
<p>Tommy let him off the hook, reluctantly refusing to chase the metaphorical RABIT down the hole with David. Not this time. “Maybe it doesn’t.” He should go and leave David to his evening plans, whatever they might have been. He wanted to stay, pretend like he still belonged there, plunk himself down in David’s desk chair and ask to hear the album he’d been listening to, make believe that the last year and a half of his life hadn’t happened.</p>
<p>David hesitated, then made a move like he was about to invite Tommy to do just that. “Tom-”</p>
<p>What if he did? What would Tommy say, or do? He’d mess it up again, mess it up like he always did.</p>
<p>His chest inexplicably tight with something new and unnamed, Tommy backed up instead, leaving the cozy shelter of David’s room for the cool, undemanding grey concrete of the hall. “I’ll let you get back to whatever it was you were doing—I just wanted to apologize, and… yeah. Have a good night. I’ll catch you later.”</p>
<p>He jogged down the hall and out of sight. And, though he was listening for it, he didn’t hear David’s door slide closed.</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <strong>Teddy: Marshal Hill says the cadets are just fine and she doesn’t get why you’re worried.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Tommy: I’m not *worried*. </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Teddy: Because you ask me to get backchannel information on everyone that you don’t care about.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Tommy: Weren’t you just telling me to do my job better?</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Tommy: This is me, jobbing better. </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Teddy: Pretty sure that’s not a verb.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Tommy: It is now that I’ve verbed it.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Teddy: Pretty sure ‘verb’ also isn’t a verb. You coming for lunch? </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Tommy: Nah. I’ve got some stuff to do. I’ll catch up with you later.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Teddy: Not Darcy stuff, right? I think that ship’s sailed.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Tommy: Not Darcy stuff. I’m over it already. </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Teddy: Someday we need to have a conversation about your commitment issues.</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Tommy: Like hell we do. </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Tommy: Save the psychobabble for Billy; he gets off on feeeeeeeeelings. </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Teddy: I’ll save you a seat in the cafeteria in case you change your mind. </strong>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>The afternoon found Tommy at loose ends again, the cadets not back for another day and his brain filled with static stress. An impulsive ransack of his storage locker revealed his old guitar, the case covered with dust and the strings loose and out of tune. Abandonment was a bitch, apparently, even for inanimate objects. It didn’t take long to get it back in decent working order, though his calluses had vanished and his fingertips started to sting way too quickly. At least it was a good sort of sting, one that cleared his head and let him focus.</p>
<p>He’d been good at this once, the music apparently connected to the part of his brain that made math easy, numbers and circuits making sense in a way that so much else refused to do. Tommy picked out a few bars of an old pop song, the notes ringing clearer as he warmed up. What else had he lost without even noticing? What other memories were creeping around in the back of his brain, waiting for him to wake up?</p>
<p>“Somebody save me, I’m going down-”</p>
<p>Tommy hadn’t been the one to fall, though. That had been Billy, knocked halfway out of his rig and swinging in the Connpod, his helmet filling with blood. He’d been ripped out of the neural bridge before the worst of it and Tommy’d been protected from the force of the hit, from the pain Billy must have felt as he succumbed.</p>
<p><em>Tommy’s</em> damage had come after that, mind exploding in a thousand razor-edged slashes as he tried to move Magnus on his own.</p>
<p>
  <em>Stay with me</em>
</p>
<p>He frowned, his hands stilling for a moment and the ringing of the plucked string fading into nothing. The memory was gone as quickly as it had arrived, a voice—not in his head like Billy or Teddy, but in his ear. It had something to do with the fight, the agonizing hour after Billy’d disappeared from their link and all Tommy’d been able to do was try to wrench himself free to help.</p>
<p><em>Stay with me.</em> He’d had a lifeline. But who? Kate on the comms as Hawker made the rescue? That whole day still bled red in his mind, the sense-memory of fear/pain/pain/pain/alone drowning out everything else.</p>
<p>Someone knocked. It wasn’t Billy, he’d have just buzzed himself in like always. “Come in,” Tommy called, not moving from his cross-legged seat at the end of his narrow bed. David opened the door and Tommy resisted the urge to sit up a little straighter.</p>
<p>“I came by to drop off some files about Sterns and Ross. Good catch; there’s some pretty shady stuff in here,” David said and glanced at the guitar, surprise registering on his face. “When did you start playing again?”</p>
<p>Tommy grinned and picked out an entirely different melody, crooning along with it. “I heard there was a secret chord, that David played and it pleased the Lord…but you don’t like my music much, now do you?”</p>
<p>David snorted, tossing the data pad on Tommy’s cluttered desk and moving toward him, the door sliding securely closed. “There’s nothing wrong with Leonard Cohen; it’s the reggaeton obsession that grates after a while. Tell me you didn’t learn the chords for <em>Hallelujah </em>just because my name is in it.”</p>
<p>“No,” Tommy objected. “Though that’s a funny idea and I’m mad that I didn’t think of it first. It’s my mom’s favourite.” He considered his options for a half-second before he tried to pick out the melodic line of the song David had been listening to the day before. He’d only heard about half of it, most of that through the wall, but he could probably figure it out if he got the right key.</p>
<p>“I didn’t realize you still had the guitar. I haven’t heard you play in years.” A shadow fell near him on the bed, David moving tentatively into arm’s reach like he was waiting for Tommy to bite his head off. Not going to happen, but then, how would David know that? Tommy hadn’t exactly been himself for a while. If he even remembered what ‘himself’ looked like. He focused on the guitar in his hands instead, on the sharp ridges of the strings under his fingertips, the clear ringing tones he could eke out of her warm wooden curves.</p>
<p>“Course I do. It’s just...been a while. And it helps me think,” Tommy admitted. It was easier to say things when he didn’t have to make eye contact, the body of the acoustic instrument a partial wall between them.</p>
<p>“About what?” David prompted, watching Tommy’s hands as he plunked the wrong note and had to backtrack.</p>
<p>There was that feeling again, like he stood at a crossroads and had to choose. And there was the tightness in his chest, right on cue. Which choice would make that discomfort go away? ‘Snappy replies to stupid questions’ hadn’t been getting him what he wanted, these days. If he was even clear on what that was. Teddy would tell him to talk, maybe jokingly threaten to knock his and David’s heads together if he had to, and as much as Tommy hated to admit it Teddy was probably the most people-savvy of the three of them.</p>
<p>“Thinking about what you said,” Tommy said grudgingly, grateful for the hair that was falling across his forehead when he bent over the guitar, an extra shield to stop David from seeing too much. “About liking me better BC.”</p>
<p>“BC?” David echoed, confusion in his voice.</p>
<p>“Before Coma.” Tommy huffed a soft laugh. “Billy started calling it that. It fits. End of an era.”</p>
<p>David shifted where he stood, shoving his hands in his pockets, but he didn’t leave. So that was something. “I didn’t…I lost my temper. I shouldn’t have said that. Is that what’s been eating at you?”</p>
<p>“Among other things.”</p>
<p>“Did you… want to talk about it?” It didn’t sound like he was super-excited by the concept, but he couldn’t be less thrilled than Tommy.</p>
<p>“No.” Then, because he didn’t want David to actually <em>leave</em>, he changed the subject. “Did Teddy send you in here?”</p>
<p>“No—why would he?”</p>
<p>Tommy snorted fondly. “He’s got a protective streak and sometimes he forgets that I’m not actually <em>his</em> brother. It’s a ghost drift thing.”</p>
<p>“Or maybe it’s a ‘he’s a friend’ thing?” David asked archly, and Tommy grinned.</p>
<p>“Nah; couldn’t be. But he doesn’t need to worry.” <em>You don’t need to worry. </em>“I’m doing okay. Trying to figure stuff out. In a process of self-actualization? No, that’s bullshit, you got me there. Call it a mid-life crisis instead,” Tommy rambled, searching for the magic combination of words that would make the conversation turn into something less…truthy.</p>
<p>“Quarter-life, surely.”</p>
<p>“You think in my line of work, that I’ll make it to a hundred and twenty? That’s positive thinking.”</p>
<p>“I have faith in your stubbornness.” David sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, and watched Tommy try to play.</p>
<p>“That may be the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me, Chief.” Tommy flashed him a crooked smile, and earned a soft chuckle in return. The moment of humour didn’t stay long, though.</p>
<p>David set his jaw, looked at Tommy, and asked the worst possible question. “You weren’t at lunch today. Or dinner yesterday. What’s going on with you lately?”</p>
<p>“Nothing’s going on,” Tommy said firmly. David arched an eyebrow. “Main-lining junk food, not sleeping super-well,” he amended, and the Eyebrow of Bullshit Detection went down.</p>
<p>Tommy could tell him more, could lay his burdens down and ask for help, tell David about the bits of memory that kept surfacing when his brain tried to rest. But the things he’d had on his mind the last couple of days were too heavy to ask <em>David</em> of all people to pitch in and carry for him. Not with everything David already carried for the whole of the Shatterdome. So he fell back on bravado, the only sanity-saver he had left.</p>
<p>“But that’s just petty, am I right? I’m living the life, dude. I’ve got Magnus Echo back, or I will when she gets out of refit, I’ve still got the highest kill-count of anyone in the PPDC so my legacy is secure,” he joked without being able to find the humour, plucking a discordant twang on the D-string. “Billy’s happy to be back in action, and Teddy’s still thrilled just to be here at all. What could I possibly have to complain about?”</p>
<p>“Mm-hm. What about <em>your</em> feelings?” David prompted, and he was doing that thing again where he looked at Tommy, looked <em>into</em> Tommy, and saw way more than he was supposed to. No-one ever looked at Tommy that way; he set out to be too slippery to be pinned down. Only he didn’t have any energy left to deflect or slide out of zone. “Everyone’s grateful to have Billy back, and Teddy’s been a solid addition to the strike group. But you went through a lot. That matters too.”</p>
<p>Tommy smiled grimly as David shifted closer, near enough that Tommy could reach out and touch if he had to guts to do it. When Tommy spoke, the words scraped in his throat like glass. “Haven’t you heard? I don’t have feelings. Just sarcasm.”</p>
<p>And despite all the shit Tommy’d flung at him over the last year and a half, despite every snide rejoinder and rude retort, <em>David</em> reached out first. He laid his hand on Tommy’s shoulder, nothing more than pressure and warmth, a connecting bridge to someone solid and real. Tommy turned into it, couldn’t stop himself even if he wanted to. He turned his head toward David’s hand. David’s knuckle accidentally brushed his cheek, and stayed there.</p>
<p>Tommy covered David’s hand with his own and held it there for a second, no longer, before everything got too much and the contact burned. He let go and David took the hint, dropping his hand. The sense-impressions of his fingers lingered on Tommy’s skin after his touch was gone, beneath his shirt, soaking in deep.</p>
<p>“Tommy-” David started, stopped, continued as though he’d changed his mind about what he’d been about to say. “I’m sorry that I flipped out at you the other day. You caught me off-guard.”</p>
<p>Tommy accepted the apology with an easy nod as his lungs remembered how to deal with air again. “It’s cool. If I’d realized I was actually coming out to you, I might have approached it differently.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Instead of assuming that you knew me, hoping that you saw through me without having to say the actual words-</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Instead of making me do the hard part on my own.</em>
</p>
<p>It sounded a lot more selfish when he actively tried to put the vague miasma of emotion into words. That was why feelings sucked.</p>
<p>“How so?” David frowned at him but it wasn’t an upset kind of frown, more of an ‘I have no idea what is happening right here’ kind of look. He could work with that. Because David was in his room, sitting on his bed, talking to him again like he mattered. Like Tommy meant something more than who his brother was, how well he could fight, how many kill markers he had sewn onto his jacket.</p>
<p>“More obvious flirting, less snark?” Tommy grinned but didn’t get an answering smile back. Not like he wanted. “I don’t know. Depends how you would have taken that.”</p>
<p>“At the time? Not well.” David looked away and shook his head at the idea, his dark brown eyes oddly intense behind those glasses when he looked back. Tommy’s pulse thudded strangely in his veins.</p>
<p>“And today?” he asked, flying the test flag out there, now that David knew, now that the only way he could misunderstand was if he wanted to. <em>What do you think of me today? If I flirted would you push me away again, or would you tell me I was good enough, worth enough, to try?</em></p>
<p>David didn’t answer him directly, but he caught and held Tommy’s gaze, something new growing in intensity in his eyes. “Do you miss it at all?” David asked, and had his eyes dropped for a moment? There was no reason at all for David to be looking at Tommy’s lips, but it had been there—just for a moment, he could have sworn. The temperature seemed to rise a notch in the room, Tommy’s mouth dry for no reason at all.</p>
<p>“What, being with guys? It’s been a long time,” he confessed, unaccountably warm all over. His voice sounded too loud in his own ears, too sharp and pointy, and he lowered it until he was speaking softly. David had to lean in slightly to hear, didn’t look like he was aware that he was doing it, that he was bringing himself that much closer into Tommy’s space. Tommy moistened his lips with his tongue and that time, David had definitely looked. “I could be convinced to give it a shot again.”</p>
<p>And then David smiled for real. He smiled and there was heat in it, heat and curiosity and still that damned hesitation that Tommy wanted to wipe away. “What would it take to convince you?” David asked, and Tommy’s heart thumped a tattoo against his ribs. He tingled at the invitation, and the implication.</p>
<p>David was waiting for his answer.</p>
<p>The thought of David over him, under him, mouth on his skin and hands on his body—it was enough to make Tommy give in to honesty, no jokes or bravado to shield him from the storm. “From you? No effort at all.”</p>
<p>“I’m not sure if that’s sweet or sad,” David snorted, but he hadn’t taken his eyes off Tommy’s. Thank God he wasn’t going to be sappy; Tommy didn’t think he could handle sappy. Definitely not now, maybe not ever. But gentle roasting, accompanied by that hopeful smile? Knowing that David knew he was a fuckup and maybe—just maybe—was considering wanting him anyway? He’d take that.</p>
<p>“Go with sweet, the payoff will be worth it,” Tommy informed him, and set his guitar aside. No more barriers, no more walls. At least for now.</p>
<p>“So you say, but I haven’t seen any evidence.”</p>
<p>“Listen to you, going on about ‘evidence’ and ‘facts,’” Tommy grumbled, leaning in. David’s hand slid into his hair, Tommy’s arm looping around his neck to pull him in and hold him close. “Put this in your comparative analysis and smoke it.”</p>
<p>He brushed his lips against David’s, an unexpected rush of nervous energy holding him back. <em>This is too important to fuck up.</em></p>
<p>Like hell it was; he’d had more than a dozen first kisses in his life, what was one more? They were mostly the same, always searching for something that would fill him up, stop the hollow feeling and the static in his brain. Always searching, never finding. Not for long. Not that he got to keep.</p>
<p>Thing was, he’d never kissed David Alleyne before.</p>
<p>That first tentative brush was barely even a kiss, testing David’s mouth, checking to see if he was allowed. The second try, that was better, Tommy’s arm tightening around him and David’s lips soft under his own. Soft and warm, as careful and tentative as his own at first, then more sure, more confident. David’s lips parted and Tommy licked between them, tasted the slick heat of David’s mouth. David made a soft sound, not quite a gasp, then he was kissing back with unexpected greed. The wave of desire broke over Tommy and he wanted to push, to rush and claim and <em>take-</em> David’s fingers curled tighter into Tommy’s hair, holding him steady, even as his knees wanted to buckle and his breath caught in his chest.</p>
<p>Held at bay for a moment, even as David tasted his mouth in return, Tommy fumbled with the buttons on David’s uniform. His shirt-tails were easy to un-tuck and Tommy skated his free hand up and under, flattened his palm against David’s stomach, drowned in the heat of him and the silk-soft texture of his skin. The softness hid miles of sleek muscle and David made that noise again, his abs tightening when Tommy traced down them. His body was a taut landscape, one Tommy wanted to play on for days, find out what other reactions he could pull from David’s lips and throat.</p>
<p>“Damn,” Tommy breathed out, breaking the kiss just long enough to catch his breath, hand splayed out against David’s solid chest. “Not bad for a guy who rides a desk.”</p>
<p>David rested his forehead against Tommy’s for a moment, his hand still cupping the back of Tommy’s head, his breath laced with a hint of the coffee he downed by the mugful. “You Jaeger jockeys aren’t the only ones who use the weight room.”</p>
<p>“And I’m grateful for it,” Tommy joked, surging up to capture David’s lips again, and again. David met him there each time, rock-steady and real, squirming when Tommy’s hand found a ticklish spot at his waist. Then Tommy had the absolutely goddamn brilliant idea to tip sideways on the bed, use the arm around David’s shoulders to pull him down too. First get horizontal, then get naked, make the world fuck off and leave them alone for an hour, maybe two.</p>
<p>They didn’t make it past eighty degrees. David drew back when Tommy tried to coax him down, dropped his hand from Tommy’s hair and broke the kiss. “I can’t stay.” David stood, untangling himself from Tommy and from Tommy’s bed, his cheeks flushed warm and his shirt not nearly rumpled enough yet for Tommy’s liking. “I’m going to be late for a meeting as it is.”</p>
<p>Half-hard and aching in his BDUs, Tommy dragged his hands through his hair, trying to focus on words instead of the flustered pounding of his heart. “No rest for the wicked, am I right?” he joked, but he was so far beyond joking. It was vitally important that he know, that David answer him—</p>
<p>“Is this going to be a thing?” Tommy asked, trying not to sound desperate as he raked his gaze over David one more time. Untucked and rumpled, his dark, plush lips a little swollen, a fullness to the front of his slacks that suggested he’d been just as affected by the kiss as Tommy. He had to stay casual, keep it cool. Just because David had turned out to be an amazing kisser didn’t mean the moment had to be anything more than momentary insanity. “Or did I only get one shot at passing the practical exam?”</p>
<p>And David—he hesitated, as he tucked in his shirt. Tommy watched and waited while he… what? Tried to decide if Tommy was worth the effort?</p>
<p>“You know where to find me,” he offered carefully, then leaned over and stole Tommy’s breath one last time with a kiss so fierce and claiming that the lukewarm rejection took on new meaning.</p>
<p>
  <em>I</em>
  <em>’m not going to chase you. The next move is yours. </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Songs referenced in this chapter:</p>
<p>Armin van Buuren, This is What it Feels Like - https://youtu.be/cDLwdmNgaOg</p>
<p>Frank Ocean, Godspeed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_XTucr9A3U</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Wherein some things that were forgotten, are remembered.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After David left, Tommy picked up the data pad that he’d originally come by to drop off. Information on Ross and Sterns, he’d said, but then Tommy had gotten distracted by smiles and abs and <em>him</em>. Now, though—he flopped into his desk chair and started to scroll through the files. Some were news clippings and other public information, some had so many three-letter acronyms and NDA warnings on the top that Tommy was reasonably sure they came from servers even David wasn’t cleared for.</p><p>“I have no idea how you do it,” he said to his empty room, “but I’m glad you do.”</p><p>The more he read, the worse it all started to look. Sterns wasn’t some random PPDC medic, he was a neuroscientist. The same one who’d been hip-deep in the Sarah Project, the experiments that had ended up with Tommy’s cadets hooked up to a brain in a jar. And Ross—he was a bigwig, had been on a half-dozen secret Pentagon committees before K-Day. Now he seemed to spend most of his time delegating projects to people like Sterns, and writing angry memos about low successful recruitment numbers among the Rangers. His letters were filled with statistics about Academy washouts and burnouts, about the money spent on training potential pilots that went un-recouped because not everyone could hack it in the Conn-pod.</p><p>
  <em>If a more agile and effective recruitment method isn’t found, then the cost-to-benefit ratio of the recruiting and academy program will be so high as to be unsupportable... blah blah blah. </em>
</p><p>Ross seemed a lot more interested in funneling money back to his home state in the form of Jaeger parts factories than he was in maintaining the quality of training—Tommy drummed his fingers on his desktop in furious rhythm. What was this guy’s motivation? Build more Jaegers, give his buddies the sweet, sweet government contracts, but only if he could make more pilots, faster? But why bother when the Academy classes still graduated a few new pairs every year, even without Jaegers to put them in?</p><p>Tommy swiped to the next page and stared at a scan of a page so redacted that it looked like a printer ribbon had exploded all over the original. Only a few words remained, and none of them made sense together. <em>Teenagers without attachments — RITA Project — semi-autonomous technology — acceptable losses.</em></p><p>“The hell?” he muttered, swiping with two fingers to blow up the image, in the hopes that he could see more of the letters behind the black. No such luck; the original had been so thoroughly blacked out that the scan was useless. “The fuck are you up to, Ross?”</p><p><em>Acceptable losses?</em> There was no such fucking thing.</p><p>His door slid open behind him, the faint bloop-and-swish barely registering on his consciousness. Not until the voices cut into his train of thought, derailing it entirely.</p><p>“I told you he’d be here.” Chavez’s warm alto broke his concentration and Tommy turned off the pad, tossing it casually onto his desk like they’d caught him looking at something easy to explain, like porn.</p><p>“Doesn’t anybody knock anymore?” he complained, drooping backwards over his chair to see Kate and America in his room, America’s hand on her hip and Kate’s arms folded as she leaned against his doorframe.</p><p>“If you don’t want us to come in, change your code,” America suggested, and Tommy had to shrug.</p><p>“Fair. What do you guys want?” He straightened up and spun around to face them, for once sure that he hadn’t actually done anything to tick them off. He’d been working, for various values of working, even if he didn’t have much to show for it just yet.</p><p>“We’re dragging you to dinner,” Kate informed him, and cocked her head toward the door. “Double time, soldier. Let’s go.”</p><p>“Dinner?” Tommy echoed in confusion. David had only just left and he’d been by at lunchtime—Tommy’s stomach growled loudly as he glanced at the clock. 1830 hours. He’d spent four hours reading files? No wonder his neck was stiff. “Shit. I lost track of time,” he explained, brushing off their concern. “I’ll grab something later.”</p><p>America grabbed the back of his chair and started shaking it gently. He made a big show out of sliding off onto the floor, landing in a disjointed puddle. Kate smothered a laugh and America just rolled her eyes as she held out a hand to help him up. “You’re too skinny already, Maximoff. Skipping meals is a bad idea.”</p><p>Tommy scoffed, pushing himself fluidly to his feet without the help. “You’ve seen what they call meals around this place, right? That garbage isn’t going to help anyone’s health.”</p><p>“Isolating yourself’s no good for you,” Kate informed him solidly, glaring at him. “This isn’t about Darcy Lewis, is it? Because if there’s an ass-kicking needed somewhere here-”</p><p>“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” Tommy retorted, actively wounded. “They give us mini-fridges for a reason. Can’t a guy just choose to eat in his room for a while without it being some kind of drama?”</p><p>America levelled a steady look at him. “You can’t.”</p><p>He understood with a flash of chagrin, even as he resisted the pressure they were putting on him to perform. <em>Take a break from the world for a while and suddenly everyone thinks you’re losing it. </em>“I’m not sulking, or—or whatever it is people think I’m doing. If you see me sitting and staring at an empty bed in the Infirmary,” he tried to joke, “<em>then</em> you’re allowed to worry.”</p><p>Kate tucked her arm through his on his other side. “We’re not letting it get that far, dummy. Not again. You need people. And people need you. And America’s not wrong,” she added as he let her tug him out into the hallway, America following them. “You’ve got to keep your strength up for when Magnus is back in operation. We’re not carrying you in a fight if you get winded right after Drop.”</p><p>“If a couple of days of terrible cafeteria meatloaf are all that’s standing between us and total annihilation, then I hate to break it to you but we’re in deep shit trouble.” He cracked wise, she laughed, America swatted the back of his head with easy fondness, and for a moment Tommy let himself forget about anything else. Including the data pad sitting on his desk, the redacted file a black-blurred digital mystery.</p><p>‘Dinner’ technically went for a couple of hours so it wasn’t like he’d completely missed the chow line. The other rangers were all still hanging out at their usual table, a seat left vacant between Billy and Teddy, like they were guarding it for him. A warmth blossomed inside him at the sight, a feeling he’d been getting more and more used to over the past months. Not that he’d ever have the words for it, or want to say them if he did.</p><p>The girls were settled in their usual spot by the time he had a full tray and joined them at the table. He slid in between his guys and they moved to make more room, let him in to the circle without breaking the conversation. The warmth settled into his bones and stayed there.</p><p>“What’s up?” Billy leaned his weight against Tommy’s side, pitching his voice quietly. Teddy was listening but pretending not to, laughing a beat too late at one of Eli’s jokes.</p><p>“I’ve got some stuff to run by you guys.” Tommy briefly considered keeping some of what he’d learned to himself, but changed his mind. Considering how he’d gone off on Billy only a few months back for keeping his own annoying wanna-be-a-hero quest a secret, Billy would happily hand him his own ass if he tried anything similar. Teddy would probably help. Scratch that; he’d be the one holding Tommy down while Billy kicked him. “David did some digging on General Ross-”</p><p>A figure passed their table, Doctor Sterns glancing over them entirely too casually for Tommy’s taste. He shut up. “Later,” he muttered to Billy, and shoved half a roll in his mouth to prevent himself from giving in to temptation and spilling it all out in public. Billy followed his glance and cocked his head as though to ask the question, but kept his mouth shut.  </p><p>“Yeah,” Tommy answered after a beat once he could talk again. “He’s part of it.”</p><p>“Got it. Later.” Billy squeezed his shoulder then looked up and over Tommy’s head, and a grin spread across his face. He kept his voice low, the rest of the table loud enough that no-one could overhear without obviously trying. “Speaking of talking later—are you going to wait until something actually happens with David to come out to Teddy, or…?” he left it open and Tommy rolled his eyes at him.</p><p>“Whatever. Nothing’s going to happen,” he lied. Billy didn’t need to know everything <em>immediately</em>. “Tell him yourself if you’re that invested.”</p><p>“I might.” Tommy should have been more suspicious when Billy stood up, but he was thinking about other things. It didn’t really register with him why Billy was saying, “Go ahead, take my seat. I want to talk to Uncle Joe for a sec.” Not until Billy was heading for the other end of the table and David was sitting down at Tommy’s side, a tray in his hands.</p><p>Tommy tensed for a beat but David didn’t say anything about earlier, just greeted him maybe a <em>little</em> more warmly than he would have on any other day. It had only been a casual make-out session, after all. Maybe David had been testing him, to see if he really was queer after all. No reason anything else had to change.</p><p>“Look who’s joining us,” Chavez teased. “They finally let you out of LOCCENT on good behaviour?”</p><p>“When they spend as much money on hiring personnel as they do on your Jaeger refits, maybe I’ll get normal human-being hours,” David replied dryly.</p><p>“Tell Mantega to take some of those doubles.”</p><p>“Sofia’s got enough on her plate wrangling the night shift.”</p><p>Feeling daring, maybe even a little relaxed, Tommy shifted his leg underneath the table until the side of his knee rested against David’s. At first he thought maybe David was too caught up in his conversation to notice, or at least if he did, he wasn’t going to react. Then he felt David move, felt the return pressure against his leg, the acknowledgement of the secret they shared.</p><p>Conversation circled around him and for once he didn’t feel the need to stick himself in the middle. His memory took hold instead, the overactive little brain-bastard, and fed him an overlay vision of a hundred similar meals, variations of the same crowd around the table. Different jokes but the same heightened laughter, the awareness that it could all vanish in an instant keeping that frantic edge to their days. He could look down the length of the industrial cafeteria table now and see Carol’s face, and Jess’; Scott trying to demonstrate a new move with knives, forks and salt shakers, harassing Cassie to help him push things around on the table—</p><p>The group was missing two faces, two vital pieces they’d never have back, but Nate had joined them down at the far end, still sad and quiet in the seat that had once been Cassie’s. Tommy nodded at him, and Nate smiled faintly in response.</p><p>It wouldn’t ever be like it was, but they were getting closer. There’d been no Eli and Joe then. No Teddy at his other side. It was a terrible, horrible trade, but at least some good had come out of the last couple of years of heinousness.</p><p>“Tom? Still with us?” David’s question cut into his thoughts, gentle and low. He could listen to that sound for years and never get sick of it; David’s radio voice had wound itself so tightly into Tommy’s psyche over the years that now he was programmed to respond.</p><p>He shrugged, stabbing a piece of something meat-like with his fork. “I’m here. I’m good. Just thinking.”</p><p>“A dangerous pastime,” David joked, which left Tommy no choice but to respond-</p><p>“I know,” and he grinned, earning a smile from David that made him feel fizzy on the inside.  </p><p>“Beauty and the Beast? Seriously?” Eli snorted, and Tommy realized with a start that they hadn’t been as quiet as he’d thought.</p><p>“I have a little sister,” David fired back, unabashed.</p><p>Tommy added, “and I’ve got a Billy.”</p><p>“Hey!” Billy yelped from the other end of the table.</p><p>“Sure, you keep on deflecting,” Eli laughed.</p><p>“I feel obliged to point out that you’re the one who recognized the quote, tough guy.” Teddy had their backs, beefing with Eli as Billy broke into a laugh and joined in. Joe started listing off which of the Spy Kids movies Eli had apparently watched more than a dozen times each when <em>he’d </em>been a kid.</p><p>In the middle of it all, David had gotten that much closer, his thigh resting against Tommy’s from hip to knee. The warm fuzzies Tommy’d been secretly relishing since he sat down changed direction, turning to tingles that raced along his skin everywhere there was contact.</p><p>So when Darcy walked by and gave him a tentative wave, he nodded cheerfully and was able to give her a smile and a wave in return without any heartache or longing inside it. Even if whatever-it-was with David didn’t end up going anywhere, at least for the moment, he had this.</p>
<hr/><p>Filling Billy and Teddy in on the things David’s research had turned up hadn’t given Tommy as much insight as he’d hoped for. They didn’t have answers either, only speculation, and he’d sacked out in bed later that night more frustrated than anything.</p><p>(Jerking off to the memory of David’s mouth had helped, the rush easing him into a fitful but thankfully dreamless sleep.)</p><p>Ross was working with J-Tech experts, that much had been clear. It gave Tommy one more thing to try.</p><p>He skipped breakfast the next day, cramming down a protein bar as he headed toward the labs at a time when most of them would be empty. He had the passcode for Kitty’s workshop and used it without hesitation. She was his crew chief, after all, and if he got caught he could easily lie and say he was in there looking for updates on the refit.</p><p>She didn’t have anything obvious on either Ross’ parts factories or Selvig and the Sarah Project, and breaking into her email was one step too far even for him. He could ask, though, and would when he saw her later that day. Disappointed, he was turning to leave when something else on her worktable caught his eye. Magnus’ black box, plugged in to an idle laptop with a starfield screensaver moving across the screen.</p><p>Never one to leave well enough alone, Tommy skimmed his fingertips across the touchpad. If she had it password protected, then no harm, no foul—but the screen brightened, displaying a series of folders labelled with different date codes and strings of letters. File backups divided by deployment, each one carefully saved and organized before Kitty wiped and replaced the system.</p><p>Drawn by morbid curiosity and the memories that were surfacing much too slowly and in goddamned <em>fragments</em>, Tommy found the folder from the one fight he couldn’t remember with perfect clarity.</p><p>
  <em>Honne-Onna. </em>
</p><p>The files were all there: telemetry and operating processes, all the different systems’ performance ratings, weapon readouts, and the one he wanted—and didn’t want, at the same time. Voice recordings, all channels.</p><p>Tommy’s finger hovered over the key.</p><p>
  <em>Stay with me.</em>
</p><p>He pushed play.</p><p>At first everything was familiar, so familiar that it burned and he almost slammed the lid of the laptop down. The running commentary, teasing the girls, the Kaiju rising—then the part he could barely stand to listen to again, the moment that seared itself into his brain like a brand.</p><p>
  <em>Magnus Echo, what’s your status?</em>
</p><p><em>Billy’s out cold – </em>fuck! <em>HUD’s down; I can’t see a goddamn thing!</em></p><p>The instant that had coloured every aspect of his life since.</p><p>
  <em>Mayday, mayday, mayday. Magnus Echo is down. Control, do you copy? Magnus Echo is down.</em>
</p><p>The pain broke over him again as he perched on the edge of the table, his nerve endings on fire with it. <em>It’s only a memory. Not real.</em> It felt real, his head throbbing in agony as he tried to move Magnus alone, the weight of trying to stand on his own—on his own, he was alone where he’d always been two—blood in his mouth and his nose, iron driving out the smell of the relay gel—</p><p>He was chasing the RABIT down into his own mind, no neural bridge to blame this time. And what he found there wasn’t pretty.</p><p>Then, the grounding voice—David’s voice, and a conversation that he barely remembered even as he listened to it again in the silence of the J-Tech lab.</p><p>
  <em>“We’re on a private channel, Tom. It’s going to be okay. Medics are en route. Hawker took the kaiju down, and we’re going to get you out of there.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I can’t. It’s too quiet. I can’t move. Billy’s gone.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“He’s not dead, Tommy. I’m looking at his vitals right now. They’re weak, but he’s holding on. You can too. You’re the most stubborn bastard I know, and I need you to focus on that. I need you to stay with me.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“It hurts. Everything hurts. It won’t stop.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I’d take it away if I could. Medics are only a few minutes away. I promise, everything is going to be alright. I’ve got you. Stay with me.”</em>
</p><p>It went like that for what felt like ages, David never wavering as he kept Tommy’s attention off the blood and the pain. And though until a few minutes ago Tommy would have sworn on his life that he’d been alone most of that hellish night, here was the proof of the opposite. The memories of the conversation came back with agonizing slowness as he took it all in, his own voice like that of a stranger. He could remember saying the words, but through a haze like a fever dream. And through it all, David had kept him talking. Kept him from drowning.</p><p><em>“Remember the time you and Kate found that box of highly illegal off-brand fireworks at the flea market?”</em> David’s voice asked on the recording, and Tommy smiled.</p><p>His own voice answered, maybe sounding a little stronger than he had before. <em>“We took them down the beach by Point Mugu and fired them into the ocean—a case of beer and a box of explosives. Good times.”</em></p><p>
  <em>“There was the small one that was supposed to be some kind of roman candle-”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Damn near took your hand off. How the hell do you let me talk you into this shit, Chief? You’re supposed to be the responsible one.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Life would be boring around here if I didn’t.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I’ll take boring right now. I’ll take all the boring, forever.”</em>
</p><p>Tommy-in-the-now swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. How had he lost all of this? Getting Billy back had consumed him, that’s how. He’d had no room for anything else.</p><p>Background noise cut into the conversation on the recording, shouting voices, the rescue team arriving—the sounds of metal shrieking as they jacked Magnus open to pull him and Billy out.</p><p><em>“They’re here,” </em>David told him, even though it was obvious, must have been even to Tommy at the time.</p><p><em>“Don’t go, David. Don’t leave me alone.”</em> Tommy begged him, his voice sounding more broken and fragile than the Tommy listening to it could reconcile. David’s reply, though—that sounded exactly like him.</p><p><em>“I won’t,” </em>David said. And, <em>“I promise. I’ll always be right here.”</em></p><p>Those words were the ones that stuck in Tommy’s head as he left the lab, locking up behind himself before detouring to the cafeteria. He’d been happy enough for a while to leave that day a semi-blank spot in his brain, block off the pain and the fear. His life had narrowed to <em>fix Billy</em>, only now that focal point was gone. The world had opened back up around him, and he’d forgotten what it felt like to run.</p><p>David hadn’t forgotten him. David had tried to pull him out, reached out in the middle of the worst thing that had ever happened to Tommy, and held out his hand. (He’d apparently tried too many times after that as well, only Tommy hadn’t been able to hear him.)</p><p>And after Tommy had shoved him away over and over again, when David had no reasons left to trust him, and Tommy had gone to him with nothing more than a crackpot theory and a desperate heart—David had come through. <em>He owes me one</em>. That had been a bald-faced lie. Tommy owed <em>David</em> more than he could ever repay. He’d helped save Billy, put Tommy’s world back the way it was supposed to be, and Tommy…he’d taken it for granted. Even then, when he’d been sure that he was alone against the world, some part of him had known that David would still be there.</p><p>Like he’d promised.</p><p>Steady, that was the word Tommy needed. David was steady and true, a fixed point around whom everyone else revolved. Tommy wanted—he realized some important things in a flash of understanding.</p><p>He wanted to be the one David revolved around, in turn. Too bad he didn’t have any stability to offer.</p><p>The elevator to LOCCENT took a million years, Tommy’s fingers drumming rapidly against the side of the coffee cup in his hand as he waited for the doors to slide open. David wasn’t at his usual post when Tommy swung inside the room, and he turned quickly to scan the desks. Where would he be if he wasn’t in LOCCENT? Only he was, standing by a terminal and swiping through a half-dozen weather maps rendered in wire frame projections above the slick glass surface.</p><p>Ignoring the greetings from the handful of other chumps working the morning shift, Tommy made a beeline for David and stuck himself between David and the computer so that he couldn’t be ignored. Getting that close to him was a huge bonus, even if David did glance around the room and take a half-step back to put some professional distance between them.</p><p>“You were the voice in my head,” Tommy informed him and handed him the coffee—black, two sugars, for David’s sweet tooth—as though David would have any idea what he was referring to.</p><p>“You’ve got a lot of those in there,” David replied dryly, the lighting in LOCCENT turning his HUD glasses faintly green. He took the cup and sipped, a faint look of pleased surprise appearing for a moment before it vanished again.</p><p>Tommy scoffed, resting his elbow on the shoulder-high console and leaning in, his voice pitched low. “I listened to the black box recordings from the Honne-Onna fight. When it mattered the most—you were with me the whole time. That means something. Is <em>that</em> what you don’t want to talk about?”</p><p>Did David’s cheeks flush a little deeper brown? Would they be warm to the touch? Warmer than normal, that was… Tommy didn’t dare try and find out. Not here. There were some lines David would never forgive him for crossing. “It’s my <em>job</em>, Tommy,” David said dismissively, what he said contradicted by the way his gaze fixed on Tommy. “Mission control. Get my pilots out and back safely.”</p><p>Undaunted, Tommy grinned and pressed a hand to his own chest. “And that’s the only thing I am to you? One of ‘your pilots’? Look me in the eye and tell me that you’d have spoken to Joe Bradley the same way.”</p><p>David shook his head in a subtle warning. “I thought you were straight until a couple of days ago, remember?” he asked, dropping his voice low to match Tommy’s.</p><p><em>There it is. </em>Tommy held his gaze, drowning in the depths of David’s mahogany-brown eyes. “You’re avoiding the question.”</p><p>There came the smile, winning out over David’s self control long enough to flicker bright and warm across his lips. “Look at that, so I am.”</p><p>“Come on,” Tommy coaxed, back on solid ground for the first time in a very long time and determined to stake his claim. “Admit it. You like me. You <em>like</em>-like me,” he added, because he felt most like his older self when he was being a brat on purpose.</p><p>There was a moment where he was <em>sure</em> David was about to smile for real, to confess out loud what Tommy could finally see clearly—but the doors to LOCCENT slid open and a couple of techs came in, breaking the illusion-bubble of privacy. Whatever might have been there, was gone. “I’m working. I can’t do this now,” David said firmly.</p><p>It wasn’t total rejection, just a delay. That was fine. “I want to talk to you about some of this Ross stuff anyway. I’ll be around tonight, once the cadets are back and settled in…” Tommy trailed off suggestively, leaving the offer open.</p><p>“I can come by your quarters tonight. We can talk then,” David said, and was there a thaw happening, or was that all Tommy’s wishful thinking? He looked hesitant, maybe nervous, but that didn’t seem right. Not for him.</p><p>Tommy wasn’t going to look this gift horse in the mouth, though, not this time. “I’m going to hold you to that,” he promised. And though he’d been told to leave, he lingered in LOCCENT for a little while—even when David went back to his station and pointedly ignored Tommy lurking.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>There were a lot of things Tommy knew about David, a lot of things that he’d imagined, but not once had he predicted the intensity and the focus with which David proceeded to take him apart.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The cadets were back on base that afternoon and Tommy went to meet them at the helipad. The helo started to descend through the blue sky, propellors kicking up a furious wind on the Shatterdome roof. The first time he’d waited up here for the kids he’d been annoyed as hell. This time he was angry, but not at them. The more he tried to sort through the information he had, the worse the scenario looked.</p><p><em>Acceptable losses</em>. The phrase kept flickering in front of his eyes, sinking sharp teeth into his mood, even though he had no context for any of it.</p><p>They looked perkier, so that was something. They were more alive than the grumpy wrecks with bags under their eyes who’d been loaded on to the helo going the other way three days before. Tommy couldn’t afford to ignore that information this time.</p><p>There wasn’t a whole lot of explaining he could do, not yet. His instructions to “avoid the hell out of Sterns, blame me if you need to, but do <em>not</em> let him jab you with any more of that shit,” at least got a few cautious agreements, Tommie and Jason exchanging grim frowns.</p><p>Interesting. Maybe they’d come to some sort of détente in Nevada after all.</p><p>He left them to get settled back in, Cranston muttering under his breath about Faraday cages, and Tommy sat down at the computer in his quarters with renewed determination. Ross’ office had insisted on reports, but he wasn’t going to risk court-martial by outright lying—and filing the actual reports felt like some undefinable betrayal. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t, but at least he could put bureaucracy to work and stall.</p><p>Saving the reports, it only took a minute to open them in a different program, delete some of the more vital bits of XML code, and resave. “The only useful thing I ever learned in gen-ed English,” Tommy muttered under his breath, attaching the corrupted and now-unreadable reports to the e-mail and sending them winging on their way. Assume it would take them a couple of days to get around to looking at the files, and maybe he’d have figured out more of the mystery by the time someone started yelling.</p><p>
  <em>Here’s hoping.</em>
</p><hr/><p>The rest of the day went too fast and too slow at the same damned time. He ran the cadets through their paces in the kwoon (all of them getting a lot better, though if Taylor didn’t start focusing, Tommy was going to stop pulling his strikes) and actually found himself enjoying some of it. He felt better knowing the cadets were back, anyway.</p><p>The rest of the time was spent with Billy and Teddy, first training, and then throwing pencils at the ceiling and trying to figure out Ross’s angle. The scattered puzzle pieces didn’t make any more sense than they had alone, though at least he felt better knowing that he wasn’t the only idiot unable to see the forest for the trees.</p><p>Tired and with no more concrete answers than he’d had that morning, Tommy let himself into his empty room after dinner and flopped heavily down on his bed—only to bounce off it again a nanosecond later. Because at some point David was going to show up, and Tommy reeked of sweat, gym mats and cafeteria funk. He dove for the tiny shower stall in the corner of his bathroom, pausing after his shower to shave. Bleaching his hair had become so much a part of him that if it weren’t for Billy, Tommy’d never remember what he’d looked like as a brunet, but the white-hair-dark-stubble combination made him look like he’d rolled his face in dirt.</p><p>Dressing up would look like he was trying too hard. Putting his gym gear back on after showering was just gross. Tommy grabbed clean BDU pants and a tank top, settling the dark blue trousers on his hips and not bothering with the belt. His hair was still damp when the buzzer sounded at his door, and Tommy padded barefoot across the small room to open it.</p><p>David stood there, still in uniform, glasses perched on top of his head. He looked at Tommy and his pupils dilated, words dying on his lips. He shook it off after a beat, took a breath that sounded a little shaky, and greeted Tommy like nothing at all had just happened. “You wanted to talk to me about the Honne-Onna fight. And Ross.”</p><p>“Come inside,” Tommy offered, standing out of the way to let David in. Only he stayed close enough to casually trail his hand along David’s arm as he passed by. The door slid closed behind him.</p><p>“Look,” David said once they were officially completely alone. He launched into a speech like he’d been rehearsing it in the hall on the way over, not meeting Tommy’s eyes. “The kiss the other day was impulsive, dumb—we’d be making a mistake. I don’t know what you thought you heard on that recording, but-”</p><p>“I know exactly what I heard, and so do you,” Tommy interrupted before David could wall himself off completely. Tommy was a master at knowing what <em>that</em> looked like. “‘<em>I’ll always be right here</em>,’ you said. And you were, until I ruined everything.”</p><p>Tommy seized his moment, grabbing David’s hand and pulling him in close. His screwups had left David running scared, so now it was up to him to fix it. David yelped in surprise but followed, and Tommy tipped his head to look at him. There were only a few inches of difference between their heights but even that was enough to be smoking hot, that feeling of having to reach <em>up</em> to kiss someone-</p><p>He did just that, slinging his arm around David’s shoulders. There was nothing tentative about this kiss, and after a beat, no hesitation on David’s part either. He muttered something that sounded a lot like “<em>fuck everything,</em>” and his hand cupped Tommy’s jaw, the other splayed against his lower back. David held him steady and kissed him, teeth scraping against Tommy’s lower lip and sending bolts of electricity straight down through Tommy’s gut. His mouth was fresh with mint this time, the soft, elusive scent of some kind of cologne?—aftershave?—settling in beneath Tommy’s skin.</p><p>There it was again, the same rush as their first kiss; not a fluke after all, or his memory blowing things out of proportion with the force of wishful thinking. David wanted him and Tommy wanted right back.</p><p>“I have been such an ass,” Tommy muttered against David’s mouth, getting his hands up underneath David’s shirt, popping open the buttons with his thumb. “How did I not see this when it was right there in front of me the whole time? Why didn’t you ever <em>say</em> anything?”</p><p>David snorted, nipping along Tommy’s freshly-shaven jaw, then down the side of his neck. “Straight, remember? Add the parade of women you had in and out of here, and the tabloid escapades—face it, you weren’t exactly stable boyfriend material,” David informed him, with words that should have stung. And would have, if they weren’t true.</p><p>“To be fair, I’m still not. Apparently.” Tommy kissed him, wrestling David’s unbuttoned shirt down and off his broad shoulders. He had an undershirt on as well, one more layer to unwrap. David paused to help him, then ran both hands down Tommy’s back and curled around his ass, pulling him in close, one of his thighs nudging Tommy’s legs apart. The kisses got deeper, tongue and teeth involved, Tommy’s cock getting harder by the minute. He rocked against David’s hip, a second long, firm line of pressure getting caught between their bodies and pulling a gasp from David’s lips.</p><p>A gasp followed by words, words that Tommy didn’t have to take too seriously as David yanked at Tommy’s tank top. “You’re a hot mess, and I’m not going to be a temporary distraction.” Only he said it against Tommy’s mouth, biting at Tommy’s lower lip, and Tommy ducked away only long enough to pull his shirt off and toss it somewhere in the corner.</p><p>“You’re saying that you think I’m hot,” Tommy replied archly, before he got David’s t-shirt off as well and was able to run his restless hands all <em>over</em> David’s chest. He didn’t have any scars, at least not any Tommy could see or feel, so unlike the circuit-suit burns and the various pale reminders of old injuries that cris-crossed Tommy’s shoulders and hands.</p><p>“Your capacity for selective hearing is mind-blowing.” David tipped his head to the side as Tommy kissed down his throat, bit the hard line where David’s neck joined his shoulder. David’s hips shuddered against his, his arousal hard against Tommy’s groin.</p><p>Tommy sucked and bit his way down David’s shoulder, running his tongue over the bites to soothe any sting. “That’s not the part of you I want to blow right now.” He reached David’s nipple and took it into his mouth, felt the skin pebble up between his lips, and David groaned.</p><p>“Jesus, Tommy—you make it very difficult to say no to you, you know that?”</p><p>“I’m counting on it. I just want to make you feel good,” Tommy promised, pressing the heel of his hand against David’s hard-on, the layers of fabric dulling the contact—not dulling it entirely, as David pushed greedily into his touch. “It doesn’t have to be any more than that if you don’t want it to be.”</p><p>“Do you ever stop talking?” David asked sharply. He’d said something wrong, wasn’t sure what, as he fumbled with David’s belt buckle. David’s hand covered his and stilled them, his breath slightly ragged.</p><p>Tommy dragged in a breath and took stock. He was down to pants and dogtags, David to pants and shoes, slightly darker welts and bites starting to blossom down David’s neck. David’s pupils were blown wide, his lips slightly parted, one of Tommy’s hands curled around his cock and the other on his belt. Tommy <em>wanted</em>, and more than that, he wanted David to want—to know that Tommy would do anything to make it good for him, to <em>be</em> good for him—</p><p>Shit. Tommy was halfway gone already and they didn’t even have their pants down yet.</p><p>He grinned, and stroked David’s cock again, David’s groan shooting straight to his own crotch and the throbbing, heavy ache that was too good to ignore. “Give me something else to do with my mouth and I might,” Tommy challenged, and laughed at the mix of gasp and groan he got out of David.</p><p>“Seriously? That’s the line you’re going with?” David fired back, a hand at the small of Tommy’s bare back. His palm was hot against Tommy’s skin and Tommy arched into it, waited for it, David’s fingers slipped beneath his waistband, headed further south- And David paused, drew back just enough to look Tommy in the eye. “Are you always walking around here <em>commando</em>?” he asked, faintly incredulously.</p><p>“Not a chance. That’s just for you.” Tommy seized the moment of distraction to back David up against the wall. The plan had been to brace him there then go to his knees, but David turned the tables. He curled his fingers around Tommy’s hand to stop him as he started to yank David’s zipper down, spinning them another one-eighty degrees.</p><p>The momentum of the movement caught Tommy off-guard and his shoulders thudded up against the wall, David following until Tommy was sandwiched between David’s body and the concrete at his back. “Shit,” David cursed under his breath at the sound. “Are you okay?”</p><p>“Never better,” Tommy replied, breathless and confined, every nerve in him resonating to David’s nearness, the heat of his body, the absolutely phenomenal muscles in the arm pressed against the wall next to Tommy’s head. He nipped at David’s chin, his lower lip, turned to bite at David’s bicep, which he shouldn’t have left right <em>there</em> within mouth range if he didn’t want something fantastic to happen. He pressed his thigh between David’s, rubbed against him shamelessly to get that friction, feel the drag of their cocks against each other, every fibre in his body screaming for more, <em>more-</em></p><p>David’s hand found his hair and laced through it, tugged his head away from David’s shoulder. “Slow down a minute, we have time.” It wasn’t the first time he’d played with Tommy’s hair but it was the roughest, fingers tangling into an accidentally sharp pull-</p><p>Tommy had to focus hard to make sense of the words, white-hot pleasure and arousal screaming through him like lightning. He could feel the rush through his whole body as he was suddenly all the way hard, his zipper too confining, his brain whiting out and his mouth dry. Tommy grabbed David’s belt and hauled him in closer, needing to be skin to skin, closer even than that, tongue lancing deep into David’s mouth.</p><p>David tugged at his hair again in what felt like an experiment, baring Tommy’s throat. He obeyed without hesitation, a rough cry catching in his throat. It was such an easy space to slip into, his trust in David built up over the years.</p><p>“<em>Oh</em>,” David said softly, looking at whatever desperate need had to be written all over Tommy’s face. “That’s how it is?”</p><p>Tommy moistened his lips, couldn’t take his eyes off David’s mouth, heart racing and his body aching. He needed, more than anything, <em>wanted- </em>his lips moved but he couldn’t get the words out.</p><p>“Tell me,” David ordered, and oh thank God. That voice alone was enough to make everything okay. David had him.</p><p>Tommy nodded, but David had probably meant to use his words. “I don’t always need it like this. But if you feel like being bossy, tonight is going to work out really well for both of us.” It wasn’t a straightforward confession, but at the moment he wasn’t exactly equipped for heavy negotiation.</p><p>“Not every time,” David replied, a purr coming into his voice as he kept talking. “But if it means you’ll actually do what I say for once? I’m going to enjoy the hell out of this.”</p><p>Tommy laughed, couldn’t help it, even as David popped Tommy’s waistband button and drew his zipper down. David took him in hand, skin on skin, the long, sure stroke sending fireworks off behind Tommy’s eyes. “Don’t get too complacent,” Tommy warned, his grin devilish, and David’s grip tightened on him in response.</p><p>“Challenge accepted,” David replied and crowded in, pinning Tommy against the wall with his knee and his hands, and all the pent-up passion of <em>how</em> many years of pining? He’d probably never admit to a number and Tommy wasn’t going to ask. Knowing was enough. “What do you really want?” David asked, a low rumble beside Tommy’s ear, his hand on Tommy’s dick making sure Tommy could barely focus on the answer. “Best-case scenario for tonight.”</p><p>Fear and nerves sank Tommy for a moment, made his tongue thick in his mouth. If he said it out loud then David would know so much more about him than he ever had, in a way Tommy could never deny. He opened his eyes, met David’s gaze straight on, and found himself drowning in the depths of the<em> care </em>he saw there. It was Tommy’s turn to make a leap of faith.</p><p>“Make me beg. You decide when I get to come. When I’ve earned it.” He got the words out, feeling his cheeks go hot at the admission. Naked; he was still half-dressed but felt stripped entirely bare.</p><p>David didn’t make fun, didn’t roast him even though Tommy’d just given him ample ammunition. He nodded instead, like he was taking Tommy seriously, and kissed him. He laced his free hand through Tommy’s fingers, holding him so tightly as their lips met in a kiss more tender and searching than anything he’d felt before. Tommy fumbled with David’s belt, waistband, zipper-<em>shit­- </em>it wasn’t as easy as it seemed to undo them without looking. David rocked into Tommy, pushed himself into Tommy’s hand, groaned into Tommy’s mouth at the curl of his fingers and the greedy strokes Tommy gave him.</p><p>“You said you wanted to blow me,” David said, almost conversationally casual. Except Tommy could feel David’s pulse under his lips and tongue, the racing beat in his throat, and he knew the truth. “Do it,” he said firmly.</p><p>Tommy let go of everything except David’s waistband and boxer briefs, dragging them down David’s taut thighs as Tommy sank gratefully to his knees.</p><p>The only thing that mattered was the rough slide of David’s hands on his body, the rasp of their breathing, and finally, hallelujah, the rub of the head of David’s prick on Tommy’s lips as he settled at David’s feet. David’s touch drowned everything out—the flashes of memory, whirling thoughts, tomorrow’s schedule, cadet ratings, skipping his workout—even down to the half-heard snatches of song lyrics that usually filled in the empty spaces between ideas.</p><p>He slicked David’s cock with his tongue, got him wet, heard David make a muffled cry somewhere above him. Tommy sank down on him, took him in, swallowed around David’s hot, hard cock—and in his rush took him too deep, too fast, his eyes watering from the intrusion. He coughed and David reacted immediately, pulling out, checking in, sweeping his thumb across Tommy’s wet lips with concern that was more destabilizing than having a dick in his mouth at all. “I’m good,” Tommy insisted roughly, his cheeks flushed warm. “Just out of practice.”</p><p>“We don’t have to-”</p><p>“Yeah, we really do.” He went slower this time, hand around the base of David’s erection and lips around the head, teasing and tasting him until David was back to fully hard and the feel of the fat cockhead in his mouth just wasn’t enough anymore. Tommy wrapped his other hand around David’s thigh, dug his fingers in to urge David to move. Tommy fell headlong into the rhythm, forgetting the strain in his legs in favour of the delicious sounds David made as Tommy rose and fell on him.</p><p>The pieces snapped into place. There was only this—David, showing Tommy what he needed, his thumbs stroking Tommy’s jaw, and his cock sliding heavy on Tommy’s tongue. Tommy buried his face in the curls at the base of David’s cock and breathed him in, scraped his teeth along the soft skin of David’s inner thigh, swallowed around the head of his prick and the salt-sour taste of pre-come collecting there.</p><p>He could come like this if he wasn’t careful, enveloped in the smell of David’s skin, sex-musk already thick in the air. Tommy wrapped a hand around his own dick, urged David to move faster, fuck his face as he stroked himself loosely at first, almost lazily-</p><p>“What are you- come here,” David said, and pulled Tommy to his feet. The blissed-out haze around Tommy faded with the change, but he could reach David’s lips again now that he was standing, and he kissed him—kissed him and David’s tongue swept through his mouth, tasting everything that lingered there.</p><p>David steered him toward the bed and Tommy let himself be moved, kicking his pants off as he went. The sheets were cool against his back when David pressed him down.</p><p>He ran his hands over Tommy’s body, along his sides, traced the swirls and arcs of the tattoo that curved around Tommy’s right hip. <em>Magnus Echo</em>, her logo blazoned on his skin. Tommy would have been happier if David’s attention would veer a little more to the left, given the option—but there was something powerfully erotic in the way David was mapping him out, like he was precious, a treasure to be memorized. And perversely, despite how much he craved it, there something too intense in being the sole focus of all David’s attention.</p><p>“You got me in bed and now all you’re going to do is look?” Tommy challenged him, breaking the moment.</p><p>“Always so pushy,” David grumbled, and threw a leg over him so that he was straddling Tommy’s thighs. His solid weight pressed Tommy down into the mattress and he ran his hands along Tommy’s arms, pulling them up until he could wrap his hands around the metal bar that passed for a headboard on the standard-issue bunk.</p><p>David only stayed over him for a moment, licked into Tommy’s mouth, their cocks hot and hard between their stomachs. Tommy thrust against him, chased the pressure and the friction against David’s abs for the handful of seconds David let him before he sat up again. “Are you comfortable like that?” he asked, stroking along Tommy’s arms, dancing his fingertips over Tommy’s knuckles where they wrapped loosely around the bar.</p><p>“I’m fine. Fuck me already,” Tommy taunted, pushing to see what David would do with the dirty talk.</p><p>Not much in the moment, just a pointed look like Tommy should have known better. “Nothing’s happening until you’re comfortable.”</p><p>Tommy took him seriously, relaxed his shoulders into the pillow and flexed his hands around the metal bar of the frame. “I’m good, I promise. No strain, no cramps. Now are you going to do anything about this, or-” he took a hand down to gesture toward his erection.</p><p>David bit his shoulder, just enough to send shockwaves of sensation through Tommy’s body, and put Tommy’s hand back on the bar where he’d been told to keep it. David licked his own hand and closed it around Tommy’s cut cock again, stroking him. The combination of tight-heat-and <em>wet </em>jolted through Tommy. David’s grin grew wider when Tommy gasped, his hips jerked to push harder into David’s fist, and his fingers tightened on the bar. “Good. Now stay there.”</p><p>There were a lot of things Tommy knew about David, a lot of things that he’d imagined, but not once had he predicted the intensity and the focus with which David proceeded to take him apart.</p><p><em>Make me beg,</em> Tommy had said, a request he was currently both regretting and desperate to see through. David’s mouth was hot and slick on his skin, his mouth, his cock—but never tight enough, never <em>long</em> enough, there and gone again, to torment some piece of him or another that Tommy hadn’t realized <em>had</em> nerve endings.</p><p>He touched Tommy, stroked him, bit and licked and tasted—drove him to the edge of insanity but never over it. Tommy didn’t let go of the bar, no matter how desperately his body ached, or how high the coiled-up tension built in the cradle of his hips. No matter, even, that David was currently taking just the tip of Tommy’s cock into his mouth, tracing tight circles with his tongue, his amazing hands on Tommy’s balls, his stomach, his thighs—Tommy tried to thrust against whatever he could reach, find some consistent friction, desperation mounting. <em>More, go deeper, feel you everywhere on me—</em></p><p>David put a hand on Tommy’s hip and held him still, strength underneath that gentle pressure as he let Tommy’s cock fall from his lips. The cool air shocked his system and Tommy groaned, flexed his fingers on the bar and tried to behave. “I said stay still,” David scolded with smug laughter laced into his voice. “You get what I give you, unless we’re done with that-” he checked in, voice serious for a moment.</p><p>He could call it now, Tommy realized; call it and beg David to let him come, get the release that he’d been aching for through the past hour. He’d been brought to the edge again and again and never once been tipped over, his dick flushed dark and leaking, every muscle screaming for it. “No,” Tommy shook his head, trying to form words through the haze in his brain. “Don’t stop. <em>David</em>-”</p><p>“’Make me beg,’ you said. I haven’t heard you beg me for anything yet.” He kissed his way down Tommy’s body again and Tommy watched greedily, watched what he wasn’t being allowed to touch. David was naked in his bed, naked and so fucking hot, hard and straddling him, teasing him with hands and mouth until he was half-incoherent and his lower belly was wet with pre-come, the throbbing ache unrelenting and the sensation never. quite. enough.</p><p>He could end the torture. All he had to do was ask. All he had to do was <em>trust</em>.</p><p>“Please,” Tommy whispered, and David clasped his hands over Tommy’s on the bar, kissed him and smiled when Tommy bit at his lower lip. He rutted against Tommy, their cocks sliding against one another slick-smooth and hot and just this side of too intense.</p><p>“Don’t think I caught that,” David replied, grinning against Tommy’s mouth.</p><p>“Asshole.”</p><p>“I definitely didn’t hear <em>that</em>.” He sat up, let go of Tommy’s hands, removed all points of contact except the weight on Tommy’s thighs where David sat, pinning him down, keeping him firmly in place.</p><p>“Please, David,” Tommy thrust against the open air, no friction, no contact, nothing except growing desperation winding up his nerve endings and sending his pulse into overdrive. “Please. I need it.”</p><p>“Use your words,” David prompted him again before going for the jab. “I can’t read your mind, remember?”</p><p>“You wouldn’t like what’s in there right now.” Tommy gasped at the feather-light touch of David’s fingertips, tracing up and down his shaft, down around his balls, pressing against his taint. “Please. I need to come. I need <em>you </em>to come. <em>Fuck!</em>” he cried out, trying to arch his back and failing as David leaned over and took him in deep. Heat, heat slick and wet, his tongue a living thing against the underside of Tommy’s dick; his whole body burned, lightning starting from his groin and radiating out through his limbs, sparks firing off behind his eyes.</p><p>“Gonna come,” Tommy gasped, pushing against David’s hand on his hip in rising desperation. “Say I can, say that it’s okay, that I’ve been good, <em>please</em>-” he babbled, half-incoherent, vaguely aware that he’d be thoroughly humiliated if anyone heard that coming from him outside the bedroom. It was different here, though; he was safe. Protected. He could let go.</p><p>David pulled off, let Tommy’s cock fall from between his lips. “You’ve been so good,” David murmured in his ear. “You can come in a moment, I promise.” He scooped up Tommy’s legs, elbows under Tommy’s knees, and pressed forward, settling his hips between Tommy’s thighs. Tommy laughed, the sheer joy of it all bubbling out of him and making him feel a little manic. <em>We’re here, doing this-</em></p><p>He didn’t go for Tommy’s ass like Tommy half-anticipated, but slotted their hips together, stomach to stomach, cock to cock. He thrust against Tommy and Tommy rocked with the movement, fingers digging into the bar, holding on desperately as the sensations changed all over again, got inexplicably better now that he could feel so much more skin. Lunging forward, David captured his mouth again, the kisses increasing in desperation as he frotted against Tommy, sliding slick against each other. “Let go of the bed,” David ordered him, using the radio voice. “Touch us both.”</p><p>Tommy let go, his fingers curled into themselves and hard to open after being clenched for so long. But God, he was so close, and David had told him to- Tommy slid his hand between their bodies and wrapped his fist around David’s cock and his own, David’s foreskin sliding easily and his breath coming in short, sharp pants that Tommy could breathe down into his lungs.</p><p>David held him and Tommy stroked them, faster and tighter, lightning building behind his eyes and their bodies slick with pre-come and sweat, so wet that surely, <em>surely</em> he’d already come without realizing it, somehow-</p><p>“Come for me, Tommy,” David whispered, his voice ragged and cracking with strain. “I want to see you come, right now.”</p><p>He was on fire before David had finished speaking, on such a goddamned hair-trigger that he was spurting white and hot over his hand, over David, over himself, the instant David had given permission. That lightning chased through his body, molten lava in his veins, fireworks and supernovas behind his eyes. He chased the aftershocks and fucked into his hand, against David’s cock, spurted <em>again</em> when surely there was nothing left inside him at all. David had turned him inside out and left him helpless to do anything but ride it through.</p><p>“Look at you,” David’s voice was there in the middle of it all, flustered and yearning instead of calm, but that was fine; Tommy had done that, was part of that <em>wanting</em>. “Christ, Tommy, you’re gorgeous like this,” he said, his voice breaking on the last words.</p><p>Tommy let go of his own dick, oversensitive now and uncomfortable, and focused on David. He tightened his hand, stroked faster and tighter, heard David curse and cry out his name, muffling the sound in Tommy’s shoulder. David’s body shook. He trembled and he came, his dark eyes black with lust and his arms tightening on Tommy’s legs, still hooked over his biceps.</p><p>He came apart in Tommy’s hands and wasn’t that the best thing Tommy had ever seen? David, sweat beading on his forehead, lost in sensation as his orgasm crashed over him. Tommy lunged up and kissed him, licked away the sweat from his upper lip, scraped his teeth along David’s lower lip as David’s movements slowed and he let Tommy’s legs down.</p><p>David collapsed, not next to Tommy because there was no room in the standard-sized single, but half next to him and half on him, come pooling in Tommy’s navel and starting to cool stickily on his stomach. Tommy couldn’t have given less of a shit about the mess. He nuzzled into David’s chest, tucked his head beneath David’s chin and wrapped his arms around his waist, breathing him in as their pulses started to calm. And this was good too, David’s arms tight around him, Tommy still and quiet, his mind silent, listening to the rhythm of David’s heart.</p><p>David moved at some point and Tommy resisted, wrapping his arms tighter. “I’ll be right back,” David promised, and Tommy grumbled, only reluctantly letting go. He heard footsteps heading toward the tiny bathroom, then the water running. A minute later David returned. He smoothed a warm, wet washcloth across Tommy’s skin, cleaning off the mess, the heat surprisingly nice against the suddenly chilly air. Tommy stretched carefully, popping his shoulders and leaning into the warmth, before the washcloth was gone and David was tucking the sheets around him.</p><p>They lay tangled in each other for what might have been hours, until David pressed his lips to Tommy’s forehead. “Thank you,” he said quietly, and Tommy frowned, still floating somewhere between sex and reality. “For letting me in,” David elaborated, pausing like he was selecting his words carefully. “I didn’t expect- I never know what to expect from you,” he admitted, “and this was huge.” David propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at Tommy, brushed his hair off his forehead. The tenderness in his touch would have freaked Tommy out any other time. In the moment, though, it was everything he needed.</p><p>“It’s <em>you. </em>I trust you,” Tommy replied, the part of him able to form words vaguely baffled by the surprise, all his vulnerabilities laid bare.</p><p>“That’s why I said thank you.” David brushed another kiss against Tommy’s lips. “I had a good time tonight.” That sounded like a goodbye, and then he was <em>going</em>, getting up out of the bed, and that was the exact opposite of what Tommy wanted. In a moment of unnamed panic, he propped himself up and snagged David’s hand when David bent to retrieve his pants from the floor.</p><p>“Stay with me?” Tommy asked, a voice inside a voice triggering a memory that he finally understood. “Just a little longer.”</p><p>And despite the look of surprise that flashed across his face, David did. He draped his clothes over the back of Tommy’s desk chair and came to bed. Tommy moved as close to the edge as he could to make room and David tucked himself tight against Tommy’s back, sliding a leg between Tommy’s knees. David tugged the blanket around them both this time, settling in with a small, contented noise as Tommy sank into sleep, in the fogged-out quiet and the warm security of his arms.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>And things were going so well... Some introspection, some more messing around, and then a rude awakening.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>David didn’t stay all night, and if he had to be a realist about it, Tommy couldn’t have expected him to. Leaving aside the optics of the morning walk of shame and the ambiguity of their current status, there was no way either of them was going to get much sleep crammed together in a single bed. Tommy was small-ish for a guy and some days the bed felt cramped with just him in it, never mind adding David on top of that.</p><p>David-on-top would have to wait for another stolen evening, assuming he wanted to go for a round two. Which was the question Tommy ended up posing as he watched David dress. “Tonight was really good,” he said with uncharacteristic caution, handing David the sock that had ended up under his desk. David hopped on one foot as he pulled it on, not saying anything until he had both feet on the ground again.</p><p>“Yeah,” he agreed, though he grabbed his shoe instead of Tommy, shoving his foot in without worrying about tying the laces. “It was,” David said and hesitated, like he wasn’t sure where the conversation was going. Fair enough.</p><p>“Would you want to-” Tommy trailed off for a beat, fighting a wave of self-consciousness. David had just seen him at his most ridiculous and vulnerable, even gotten off on it. Why was a simple check-in conversation so hard? “That is,” Tommy recovered, not nearly as smoothly as he would have liked. “Was this a one-off? Because I can think of a whole bunch of things we haven’t had a chance to try yet, so it would be a real missed opportunity if it was.”</p><p>“Is this how you arrange all your booty calls?” David asked, and Tommy’s head jerked up in alarm before he saw the glint of mischief in David’s eyes. David moved toward him and settled his hands lightly on Tommy’s hips, where the waistband of his pajama pants met his bare skin. “Because I have no idea how you get the kind of play you do if this is your usual level of suave.”</p><p>Tommy pouted at him, the pretense badly undercut by the way he naturally leaned in to David’s touch. “My reputation is a lot more exciting than my actual life, thank you. And call it whatever you want; I just want to know if you’re up for doing it again sometime.” He tucked his fingertips into David’s back pockets and squeezed.</p><p>Usually this wasn’t his problem point. Things generally made it a month, maybe two, before people started to get sick of him. Some had lasted longer, but inevitably the cracks would begin to show, Tommy unable to measure up to whatever ideal his partners had in their minds. He’d take a month, if that was all David wanted him for. At least it would be something.</p><p>“Yeah,” David agreed, and he tipped his head forward to rest his forehead against Tommy’s. “That’d be good. Next time, if we have condoms-” he trailed off.</p><p>“Oh, hell yes. Next time. Your dick is spectacular and I want to ride the hell out of it.”</p><p>“I’m flattered, I think.”</p><p>It shouldn’t have felt that good, knowing that he was making his life so much more complicated. Forging a fuckbuddy relationship with David carried the potential for major disaster, even though they weren't in the same chain of command.</p><p>
  <em>It doesn’t have to be a fuckbuddy thing; if David’s really been in love with me all this time-</em>
</p><p>He couldn’t let himself think that way. No-one had even <em>hinted</em> at the word ‘love,’ and when it came to dating, Tommy wasn’t even sure that he knew what that meant. Look at what had happened the moment he’d tried to imagine anything longer-term with Darcy. There was no way she could have known what had crossed his mind, and she’d broken it off the next day anyway.</p><p>“I’m going to have to bribe the quartermaster, though,” Tommy joked to get his mind off too-serious things. “See if I can score another mattress so we can put ‘em both on the floor. Anything more athletic than tonight and that old cot’s not going to survive.”</p><p>“That almost sounds like another challenge,” David grinned, and Tommy had been <em>such</em> an idiot for missing how his eyes could light up that way, the strength and the fire that simmered just below the surface. He was beautiful, and Tommy had come stupidly close to letting all that potential slip through his fingers.</p><p>“Sure, but you have to do the explaining as to why I’d need an entirely new bedframe. Liberating a second mattress from an empty room somewhere will be a lot simpler.” Tommy was dragging out the inevitable even as the clock clicked over on the hour, 02:00 glowing malevolently from the screen.</p><p>“Logistics and requisitions aren’t a problem,” David said. “Remember who you’re talking to, here. We’ll find something.” One more kiss and he let go, retrieved his glasses from the desk and stuck them on top of his head.</p><p>He paused before he left, his gaze lingering on Tommy standing there in the middle of his room in just a pair of soft cotton pajama pants, arms folded across his bare chest, his hair a rumpled mess. “I don’t have any plans tomorrow night,” David offered, and Tommy tried to clamp down hard on the tell-tale fluttering behind his ribs.</p><p>“Tomorrow’s good,” Tommy confirmed, without bothering to check—or even think about—his calendar. Everything else he might have planned was automatically lower priority now. “It’s a date.”</p><p>The goodnights fell somewhere between awkward and easy as David left his room, and Tommy flopped back onto his bed feeling oddly… lonely. It made sense for David to go, sleep in his own bed, give them both the space they needed as adult men navigating a new casual with-benefits arrangement.</p><p>David hadn’t offered anything other than that, and Tommy wasn’t going to risk spoiling what he <em>did</em> have by asking for more.</p><p>Still. It would have been nice if he’d stayed.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <strong>Kate: Your turn to get flowers</strong>
</p><p>It was a good excuse to book a bike out of the motor pool and hit the freeway while the early morning mist was still hanging in the air. There weren’t many fancy florists around these days; not on the coast. But farmers’ markets popped up and vanished in predictable waves, and Tommy was back at the Shatterdome by midmorning, a bouquet of fresh flowers in his saddlebag.</p><p>The hangar was mostly empty that time of day, a few techs buzzing around not paying attention to anyone in particular, and Tommy headed for the empty bay. His steps seemed to get more difficult the closer he got, the air getting heavy and his chest hollowing out as he arrived at the spot where Stinger Goliath used to berth. Last week’s tributes had started to wilt, except for the constellations of baby’s breath; those fuckers would never die.</p><p>He brushed his fingers against a frond, and the dried white petals turned to snow, then to ash, and crumbled to nothing. Guess he was wrong.</p><p>None of them had thought the Langs would die, either.</p><p>The shrine had sprung up on its own, notes and flowers left first by their pit crew, Stinger Goliath’s techs and mechanics; then by others who’d known and loved them. The rangers had taken over maintenance when Eli’d noticed some of the bouquets drooping, the stale stench of dying vegetation turning the tribute into a morgue. No-one said anything official; it just became a thing they did. Train, fight, take care of the Langs. Sooner or later some other Jaeger, some other team, would fill the empty hole. Until then-</p><p>Tommy pulled the dead flowers out of the first vase and junked them, ignoring the tumble of dried petals and soggy leaves that fell around his knee. Teddy had appeared by the time Tommy was working his way through vase number two, and quietly joined in the cleanup.</p><p>When he did make conversation a minute later, it was on an entirely different subject. “You and David, hunh?” Teddy asked, unwrapping the fresh flowers from the market. He asked it casually, but he glanced over at Tommy like he was… what? Checking in? Performing co-pilot maintenance, like Tommy was weeding out the dead blossoms from the survivors?</p><p>“That obvious?” Tommy replied, dropping to one knee to start changing out the water. He could snow Teddy, keep everything locked away and private, but what was the point? He’d know eventually, and—if Tommy was forced at gunpoint to admit it—he’d describe Teddy as one of the few people in the world he could actually talk to. About some things.</p><p>Teddy shrugged, finishing his vase and bundling up the dead flowers, tucking them in the bag. “Billy might have mentioned that something was brewing.”</p><p>Yeah, that figured. But it was Billy, so it was almost the same thing as Tommy bringing it up, only without Tommy actually having to do any of the heavy lifting. Billy was helpful like that. So Tommy nodded, arranging the bright yellow daisies in a way that hopefully didn’t look totally stupid. “We hooked up, but I don’t know what it is yet. Or if it’s going to be anything. You’re not mad at me for not telling you myself?”</p><p>“Nope. If it was important enough, you’d have said something. Probably.” Teddy gave him a faintly exasperated look that Tommy blatantly ignored, and he sat on the black-and-white striped step that circled the edge of Stinger Goliath’s bay. “Anyway, I learned on the first day we met that I wasn’t going to get anywhere with you by being pushy.”</p><p>“It took you longer than that, boy scout.”</p><p>“Details,” Teddy shrugged off the correction. A mischievous glint came into his eye and he grinned. “Though I guess we could have followed Marshal Danvers’ advice and fucked it out after all.”</p><p>“Gaaaah!” Tommy recoiled with immediate and visceral disgust and Teddy cracked up, laughing harder when Tommy balled up the floral wrapping paper and winged it at his head.</p><p>Teddy batted the makeshift missile out of the air, barely getting words out between the bouts of laughter. “You should have seen your face, dude. That was fantastic.”</p><p>“Don’t even <em>joke.</em> That’s how horrible rumours get started.” Tommy snorted, stood, and wiped his hands on the thighs of his jeans. A glance around the bay proved he’d gotten most of everything. He crossed to where Teddy sat, and joined him on the low, wide riser. Teddy pulled himself together and wiped the tears from his eyes.</p><p>The last of Teddy’s snickers faded away and they settled into silence, the distant noises of the Shatterdome casting a strange kind of melancholy over the empty, echoing space. One more maintenance job done; one more week without them.</p><p>Tommy’s shoulders sagged and he sighed without realizing it at first, Teddy’s gentle shoulder bump a reminder that he wasn’t alone.</p><p>“Yeah,” Teddy confirmed softly, elbows resting on his knees. “I miss them too.”</p><p>“How do you do it?” Tommy asked, his eyes on the small purple teddy bear that had shown up among the flowers in that first horrible week. Kate, probably.</p><p>“Do what?”</p><p>Tommy grimaced. “You’ve had way more than your share of shit thrown your way, and you’re still a beam of fucking sunshine.”</p><p>“Not all the time,” Teddy objected. “You know that.”</p><p>“Often enough that it’s one of your defining characteristics. ‘Which one’s Altman?’ ‘The ridiculously goddamn <em>nice</em> one.’ How do you stop all of this-” Tommy gestured around them at the empty Jaeger bay, “from grinding that out of you?”</p><p>Teddy shifted, but his presence—that solid, reassuring wall at Tommy’s left side—didn’t change. “You don’t let it get to you that badly,” he pointed out. “How do <em>you</em> manage, going out there and fighting every fight, knowing that no matter how many times we win, there’s going to be another kaiju on the horizon?”</p><p>“Spite,” Tommy answered, mostly meaning it, and Teddy grinned. “But that’s an easy one. We’re the good guys, we punch the bad guys until they stop moving. The rest of life…that’s complicated.” His eyes drifted up toward the window of LOCCENT, or where it would be if there wasn’t half a wall in the way. If Teddy noticed, he didn’t bring it up.</p><p>“You okay?” he did ask. “Anything new bugging you, or is it the same old stuff?”</p><p>Tommy shrugged one shoulder. “Meh. Had more free time to think than normal, I guess. Magnus being offline means more desk-work, and there isn’t even the chance of a deployment to break the monotony. I’m getting dull. Hopefully it’s not a sign of maturity sneaking up on me.”</p><p>“Mmm. Because that would be <em>terrible.</em>”</p><p>“You’re one to talk. You sleep with a stuffed animal.”</p><p>“Is that any way to speak about your brother?” Teddy clutched his arm and rocked aside with fake momentum when Tommy socked him lightly in the shoulder. “Anyway, Billy bought me that Pikachu. It’s romantic, not childish.”</p><p>“Sure,” Tommy found himself snickering, much to his own surprise. <em>Beam of fucking sunshine</em>. Score another one for Teddy and his positivity circus. “Whatever you say.”</p><p>Teddy stretched his legs out on front of him, in a gesture so familiar that Tommy was momentarily surprised that he wasn’t doing it himself. “I don’t have any good answers,” Teddy said after a minute. “But I know that we’ve got each other. Whatever happens, you’ll always have Billy and me. That part’s not complicated anymore.”</p><p>True. For ages, putting his team—his <em>family</em>—back together had been all he’d wanted. And he had that. Only now he was wondering if it was really enough.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em>“It’s time. RITA is behind schedule. Ship them off.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Have they been primed enough?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“We’ll find out. Alert Selvig and start making the necessary arrangements. Ross expects results and he’s running out of patience.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“What about the babysitter?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“If he gets in the way, remove him.”</em>
</p>
<hr/><p>Less than two days in to their new <em>whatever</em>, and ‘in bed with David’ was already one of Tommy’s favourite places. A little casual break-and-enter had turned up an unused mattress in one of the empty barracks rooms and he’d sweet-talked Billy into helping him haul it down the hallway. They had enough of a residual reputation for pranks that no-one blinked at the Maximoff twins apparently Up To Something Again.</p><p>Tommy was appreciating the hell out of it now, David stretched out underneath him on the shoved-together mattresses and haphazard layers of sheets and blankets on Tommy’s floor. His broad hands had settled on Tommy’s hips, holding him steady as they moved. Straddling David like this, riding him, Tommy could see and feel every tremor, the dark flush starting to creep down David’s chest, the hunger on his face when Tommy stroked himself in time with the rolls of his hips.</p><p>It was both too good and way too slow, stretching the limits of Tommy’s self-control. But David had taken such good care of him only yesterday—he deserved the same attention now. Deserved more. Tommy rolled his hips again and clenched tight, the way that made David tremble and cry out and dig his fingers in harder, hard enough to leave marks that would linger.</p><p>Leaning back, he took David as deep as he could and splayed his hand out on David’s chest—partly to brace himself as he moved, partly to feel the ripples of David’s muscles underneath his sweat-damp skin.</p><p>Except David closed his eyes, his hands restless on Tommy’s body. He needed to see David’s reactions, wanted to know that David was here, with him, not distracted or bored. It was baseless, it was greedy, it was jealous—he needed it anyway.</p><p>He laced his fingers through David’s and that got his attention, as did pressing David’s hands up beside his head. Surging in, Tommy kissed him, claimed him, moved with him and luxuriated in the stretched-out feeling, the pressure, the <em>fullness</em> of David’s cock fucking deep into his core.</p><p>David groaned Tommy’s name against his mouth and kissed him back, tongue lancing between his lips. Tommy sank into the kiss, drowned in it, his erection pressed hard and hot between their bodies. Nothing had ever felt this good, and he tried to push all of that into the kiss, show David how much Tommy wanted him, just like this- David moved faster, chasing the sensation. Biting along his skin, Tommy licked the stinging beads of sweat away from David’s collarbone, his throat, his jaw. David tipped his head back and gave Tommy easy access, let him have everything.</p><p>Tommy smiled against his throat, dragging in a shuddering breath. On second thought, he could live like this forever, in the tenderness of the moment, the ember deep inside stoked to a raging fire. David smelled so damned good all the time—Tommy’s heart swelled alarmingly, that <em>contentment</em> starting to feel almost familiar. Almost easy.</p><p>“Admit it,” Tommy said to distract himself from feelings that were heading straight toward ‘overwhelming,’ laughing as he kissed his way down David’s throat. “You pined.”</p><p>Now David’s eyes were open, <em>now</em> David was looking at him, laughing with him, his impossibly perfect mouth curling into a smile. “Absolutely not. There was no pining.” David wrapped his hands around Tommy’s hips again and pushed into him at just the right angle.</p><p>“Holy shit!” Tommy gasped, his cock fully hard again and wet, remnants of lube left on David’s fingers when he closed his hand around it and stroked. Pleasure raced hot and wild along Tommy’s skin, every nerve alive.</p><p>“Yearning, then,” Tommy offered once he’d caught his breath, and dropped his mouth lower to tug David’s nipples between his lips and teeth. He’d discovered just how sensitive they were earlier that evening, much to his delight, and now the dark circles went tight again at the barest brush of his tongue.</p><p>David snorted a soft laugh and Tommy fucked up into the circle of his fingers, then down onto David’s cock, impossibly full of sensation in both directions, of raw and desperate pleasure. “There may have been a <em>little</em> yearning. I’ll give you that.”</p><p>“Was it worth it?” He was fishing, angling for praise, wanting to hear David telling him that he was special, that he was important, that he was wanted-</p><p>“You’re seriously asking me this when I’m <em>in</em> you?” David let go of Tommy’s dick and Tommy groaned. He didn’t have the chance to find his words before David was moving. He gathered Tommy up and flipped them both so that Tommy was on his back, his legs over David’s arms, David slotting so easily between his thighs that it was easy to imagine they might have been designed to fit that way.</p><p>On top now, David fucked into him faster, got Tommy making cries that he had to muffle in his arm. Brutally hard, Tommy’s cock bounced against his stomach and smeared trails of pre-come along his skin.</p><p>He’d been hovering in that nebulous not-quite space for a while, focused on making David feel good, and the change in pace sent him hurtling toward orgasm with unexpected speed. Tommy grabbed for David’s ass, pulled him in tighter, fucked onto him with a mounting desperation echoed in David’s rapid breathing and the stutters of his hips.</p><p>“You make me nuts, you know that? Yes,” David admitted, his voice in Tommy’s ear, his hand around Tommy’s cock as he stroked, the pad of his thumb pressing just under the head. “Yes, you were worth the wait. You <em>are</em> worth it. You’re exactly what I need.”</p><p>Tommy came with a ferocity that surprised himself, slamming into it hard and fast, a hundred-thousand flashbulbs going off at once and his body seizing tight. Lightning and fireworks exploded in his brain with barely any warning, come splattering over David’s hand, Tommy’s chest, up almost as far as his chin.</p><p>David fucked him through it with a laugh that sounded almost triumphant. He buried himself inside Tommy and tensed, trembled, fit his mouth over Tommy’s and kissed him desperately as his body seized. Tommy held him there, breathed with him until the shaking stopped.</p><p>David drew in a ragged breath, forehead resting against Tommy’s shoulder for a few long moments as Tommy’s racing pulse settled into something lazier.</p><p>“You’ve got a real praise kink going on there,” David teased after that, nuzzling Tommy’s ear before carefully, gently, pulling out. He stripped off the condom and tossed it into the nearby trash can before sprawling out on the mattress again, resting his arm casually over Tommy’s side.</p><p>“Do not,” Tommy huffed, but it was a blatant lie. Who wouldn’t feel good when someone told them they were amazing? That <em>David Alleyne</em> considered Tommy to be special—for non-fighting related reasons? For <em>sexy</em> reasons?—of course he was going to react. “That timing was purely coincidental,” he added for good measure, sliding closer. He pressed his face into David’s chest and slipped his arms around David’s narrow waist.</p><p>“So you <em>don’t</em> want me to tell you that you’re a fantastic lay,” David said, and without looking, Tommy could hear the easy affection in his voice, the purr lying underneath it that only seemed to come out when they were in bed. “Or talk about how good you were for me yesterday, how much I like being in your mouth-”</p><p>Tommy’s dick twitched, trying in vain to get back in the game, and his hips moved against David’s despite himself. “Dammit.” He gave up the pretence with a grin, his blood still fizzy and his head swimming in a half-sleepy, half-wired haze. “Can’t help it, it’s the voice. You do things to me.”</p><p>“The what?” David asked, flopping onto his back. Tommy followed, sprawling across David’s chest and able to prop himself up to look David in the eye. Those dark brown eyes were traps; he knew it and let himself be snared anyway.</p><p>“The voice,” Tommy insisted, unable to keep from teasing him. “Like when you’re on the comms. <em>Magnus, you are a go for Drop.</em>” He deepened his voice and tried to sound all official and serious, hard to do when David’s chest was shaking underneath him like he was trying to hold in a laugh. Encouraged, Tommy kept going. “<em>I have a visual, bearing Green085. What the hell do you think you’re doing with that plasmacaster? Get back in position. Bunch of adrenaline-junkie assholes.</em>”</p><p>“I do <em>not</em> sound like that.”</p><p>“You absolutely do. All authoritative and bossy. It’s hot.”</p><p>“That’s what gets you going? Getting told off for recklessly endangering billions of dollars of superpowered technology?” David teased him right back, one hand tucked beneath his head and the other resting warm on the hollow curve of Tommy’s spine, keeping him close. “I should probably be offended that it’s not my charm and good looks.”</p><p>“Those too,” Tommy conceded, pressing a kiss to David’s collarbone. “But a guy’s got to have priorities.”</p><p>A dangerous glint came into David's eye, and his grin widened. When he replied his voice had gone all deep, like he’d just slid in behind his mic in LOCCENT, but more so. “Get in harness, Ranger; it’s time for a test run.” He couldn’t hold the straight face for long, bursting into laughter at Tommy’s expression.</p><p>Tommy shook his head, snickering even as his face went warm. “Careful, dude. Make this a habit and I’m going to get a boner in Magnus every time you tell us we fought well.”</p><p>“Don’t tempt me,” David laughed. And for once the sound felt like it came easy, so relaxed, like he’d finally let go of all the weight that laid on him day after day. Tommy smiled against David’s chest and held him close, daring to imagine—just for a moment—a life where he could always have this. </p>
<hr/><p>After the cleanup, and the stretch of time curled around one another in the warmth of both afterglow and blanket pile that Tommy refused to think of as ‘cuddling,’ David had made a half-hearted move to leave. But Tommy’d been wrapped around him, arms and legs both, with his nose buried in the short, tight curls at the nape of David’s neck, and David didn’t fight it. Instead he slipped his fingers between Tommy’s, tugged Tommy’s arm closer around his chest, and settled in as the little spoon without any further complaint.</p><p>Tommy slipped into sleep more easily than he’d ever done before, the rhythm of David’s breathing a soothing lullaby.</p><p>The buzzer followed by a rapid knock on Tommy’s door startled him awake, and in the bleary-eyed first moment of consciousness, his eyes went to the screen above his desk. If they were waking him up it had to be a kaiju attack, which meant the stats and alert status would be displaying any second now—only the screen stayed dark. Because Magnus Echo was in pieces in J-Tech, his team was off rotation, and there was no voice over the PA calling the base to combat-readiness.</p><p>So what the fuck?</p><p>The knock sounded again; he hadn’t imagined it. It came with a voice this time, one he recognized through the fog. “Ranger Maximoff?”</p><p>Tommy folded himself out of bed, David rolling over in his sleep and trying to keep him pinned down as he pushed himself to standing. Naked—nope. There was a pair of sweatpants on the floor and he pulled them on. Not high fashion, but a better choice than answering the door in his birthday suit. “Yeah, yeah. Coming.”</p><p>He scrubbed at his face as he thumbed the door lock, the door sliding open to reveal Tommie Oliver. “It’s three in the fucking morning, this better be good-” he started to chew her out before he opened his eyes properly and got a look. She was dressed like she was headed to the gym, or like him, pulled on whatever clothes were immediately to hand, her ponytail a haphazard mess and a hunted, stressed-out look written all over her face.</p><p>“Oh. Someone’s been giving you shit? Who do I have to punch?” Tommy asked, brain still desperately trying to spin up to ‘functional.’</p><p>A bleary voice came from the bed on the floor behind him. “No punching, please? Too much paperwork.”</p><p>Tommy turned and shook his head. Some things were more important than paperwork. “Someone’s been fucking with Cadet Oliver.”</p><p>“Okay. That’s legit. Who are we punching?” David sat up in bed and was rubbing the sleep from his eyes, sheets bunched around his hips. Tommy wanted nothing more in the world than to get back in there with him, but-</p><p>Oliver’s eyes flickered over Tommy’s shoulder and went wide with surprise. “Chief?! … No-one. No punching. But there is something we need you to see.”</p><p>On the one hand, fuck everything. It was an ungodly hour of the morning, he’d been up late the last two nights in a row, and he had better things to do than listen to cadets whine about the PPDC. On the other hand, Oliver was a mess and she’d never come to him for help like this before. Whatever was happening, she thought it was important enough to need immediate intervention, and who else on base was going to listen to her if he didn’t?</p><p>Tommy sighed internally, already regretting it. “Two minutes to get clothes on.” He held a pair of fingers up in demonstration and she nodded, stepping aside to let his door slide closed. David was up and already starting to dress, hauling his briefs on underneath the sheet wrapped haphazardly around his waist.</p><p>Just under two minutes later, Tommy pulled on his boot laces and made a half-assed attempt at tying them, his hair damp from sticking his head under the tap in an attempt to shock himself into life. He’d given up on trying to find proper uniform; the work-out shirt and his BDU pants would have to be enough, his dog tags jingling as he headed for the door. David followed wearing one of Tommy’s t-shirts, blearily tucking the hem into his waistband. There wasn’t time to properly appreciate that concept, Tommie Oliver bouncing restlessly on her toes when they joined her in the hall.</p><p>She didn’t ask as they started walking, though from the way she kept glancing at David and Tommy she had to be dying to. Tommy didn’t feel like indulging her curiosity, especially because he wasn’t sure what to call any of it. The currently ambiguous state of his sex life definitely wasn’t a conversation he planned to open with <em>cadets</em>.</p><p>“So? What’s so important that it couldn’t wait until morning?” Tommy asked, filling the silence before it could get truly awkward.</p><p>“Billy—Cadet Cranston—found something in the wall,” Oliver replied, and Tommy exchanged a confused look with David.</p><p>“I’m going to regret asking this, but why was he looking in the wall?” David asked before Tommy could.</p><p>Oliver pushed the elevator button when they reached it, looking resigned at the question. “He’s been convinced that there’s a signal coming from it, something tracking us, messing with our sleep—and then when we were in Nevada, it felt so different than the barracks here. He built a detector from spare parts from J-Tech, and it started going berserk this evening.”</p><p>“So he took the wall apart,” Tommy supplied the obvious next step out loud.</p><p>“There was a panel that lifted off, and this thing was behind it,” she confirmed, the elevator pinging obediently and the doors sliding open.</p><p>“You’re sure it isn’t something that’s supposed to be there? There are a lot of computer outlets and fibre conduits running all over this place.”</p><p>“Not like this, sir.”</p><p>Tommy wasn’t sure what he expected to find when Oliver led them to the cadet barracks, but the buzzing activity hadn’t been on the admittedly short list. All of them were wide awake, the other five clustered around a wall panel when the door slid open and Oliver, Tommy and David walked through.</p><p>Kim Hart noticed them first, shooting upright to stand tall—not quite ‘at attention,’ but close enough to it. “Ranger on deck!”</p><p>That got their attention pretty damn quick, though David’s presence at his side got more of it. “You brought Chief Alleyne? Why?” Jason hissed at Tommie, failing at keeping his voice low.</p><p>“Nice to know I’m needed,” David snarked, hands in his pockets, and Tommy fell for him that little bit more.</p><p>“<em>I </em>need you,” Tommy offered.</p><p>David’s reply was as sarcastic as he probably thought Tommy’s had been. “That’s very touching. Thank you.”</p><p>Over by the wall, they were the current subject of a rushed and quiet conversation. Tommy could pretend to ignore it, considering they were <em>trying</em> to be subtle. “He was already there when I got there,” Tommie said.</p><p>“He-? <em>Oh.</em>”</p><p>Cranston looked up from the box he was holding and frowned at Jason and Tommie. “But non-commissioned officers in the PPDC at the rate of Chief and above are entitled to single rooms, provided that the Shatterdome has the appropriate allotment for their staffing levels-”</p><p>“<em>In bed</em>,” Tommie emphasized.</p><p>“They’re in a relationship, Billy. Spending the night usually goes along with that.” Jason glanced over at them as he explained and Tommy's chest clenched. A glance at <em>David</em> showed him looking away and not meeting Tommy’s eyes. That was more than enough of <em>that</em> impending disaster, thank you.</p><p>Tommy raised an eyebrow at Jason in imitation of one of Danvers’ best murder-looks, and headed over to the cluster of teenagers and the pried-open wall panel. The sleek silver-coloured ovoid contraption attached to a power conduit and nestled against a joist was not something he’d ever seen before, and didn’t look anything like PPDC technology. Thank god for distractions. </p><p>“Okay, Cadet,” Tommy heard himself say, and he settled on his heels next to Cranston. “Tell me everything.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>So much for peace and quiet. But at least they have a few answers...</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“What do you make of it?” Tommy asked, looking over Kitty’s shoulder as she worked.</p><p>“Whoever put this in knew what they were doing. It’s hard-wired into the barracks power supply line, and it’s been designed to draw the same wattage as the lighting. They knew how to keep it from being picked up by any internal maintenance checks.” Kitty flipped open her multitool and pried at a seam in the gizmo, while Doug, sitting cross-legged across from her, tapped away at his laptop. Wires spooled out on the floor, Doug’s system spliced in between the gizmo and the wall to intercept the data flow.</p><p>Tommy’d been able to follow Cranston’s explanation about the emission detector he’d kitbashed together, but when it came time to taking the anomalous gizmo apart for diagnostics, ‘calling someone smarter than me’ had been his preferred option. Kitty’d brought Doug with her, the lure of a mystery enough to haul both of Magnus Echo’s tech leads out of quarters.</p><p>“Which means they had access to the Shatterdome’s blueprints and wiring diagrams.” Teddy leaned against the wall behind Doug, covering his mouth with the back of his hand when he yawned.</p><p>Billy sat at Teddy’s feet, almost on top of them, watching the proceedings with a frown. “That’s only mildly terrifying. No-one gets on base without passing some serious security checks, so that means it was what—an inside job?” They’d been Tommy’s next call; if he was going to be awake chasing gremlins at three in the morning, he needed the other two-thirds of his brain cell to suffer along with him.</p><p>The cadets mostly kept back from the cluster of senior officers and non-coms. The level of reverence in the room had gone up a few notches when Kitty and Doug got there, higher still when the rest of Magnus Echo’s crew arrived. It was a weird feeling, one he hadn’t entirely clocked when it was just him and the cadets, and totally different from the media adulation that alternated between amazing ego-boosts and ridiculously intrusive.</p><p>“So what do we do with that?” Tommy asked, his arms folded across his chest. “Background checks on everyone who’s been in or out of here in the last three weeks? That’s hundreds of people, and no guarantee any of them will turn up something suspicious.”</p><p>Teddy frowned. “It’s too late for fingerprints, too many people have already touched it.”</p><p>“Between the Jaeger crews, command structure, operational staff and adjuncts from the various military services, there are over a thousand people with credentials in LA alone,” David said with a grimace. “And that’s not counting government personnel with clearances. For all we know, someone could have swiped a custodian’s badge and coveralls for a few hours. The enemy we were established to fight doesn’t exactly come to the front gate and ask where to find parking.”</p><p>“It’s got to be connected to General Ross,” Tommy said, only reconsidering the revelation once the words were already out. Doug, Kitty and the cadets hadn’t heard this part, and the looks he got back ranged from deep confusion to total disbelief. He barrelled through without stopping to let them ask. “We know he has Dr. Sterns elbow-deep in something hinky to do with the cadets; it’d be way too huge a coincidence if this wasn’t part of whatever ‘Project Rita’ is. And we already know he’s got that Selvig guy in his pocket. That brain-jar-”</p><p>“The Sarah Bellum Project,” Kitty filled in, disgust in her voice, though he couldn’t tell whether it was about the brain, or the awful pun.</p><p>“-that. And Selvig’s all over the base. He could have wired this thing in before the cadets arrived. No-one would blink at seeing him walk around with a tool kit.”</p><p>“But that doesn’t answer the question of ‘why,’” Tommie broke in from the end of her bunk. “Why would Dr. Selvig bug our barracks? None of us have any information that he’d want.”</p><p>Doug unfolded his legs and turned his screen to show something to Kitty and Tommy. “That’s because it’s not a bug. It’s set to broadcast, not receive. And based on the data packets I intercepted? I think it’s transmitting theta waves. There’s a secondary signal that looks like an ‘all’s well’ report that goes off on the hour, and it’s going <em>somewhere</em> on base, I’m just not sure where yet. The squib vanishes into the general data stream, and we use a <em>lot</em> of data around here. It’ll take hours, maybe days, to trace the other end.”</p><p>“Theta waves—the dream brainwaves?” Tommy took a stab at it, and felt a brief rush of satisfaction at David’s nod.</p><p>Kitty nodded as well, her glance flicking over to where Billy was sitting. “…the same frequencies that were spiking in Billy’s cortex when he was in the coma.” And his consciousness was in Magnus, though she didn’t include that part.</p><p>“The timer’s set to activate it at night,” Doug confirmed, turning his computer back to face himself again.</p><p>“Which explains why we haven’t been able to sleep for shit,” Jason Scott spat out, anger simmering beneath the surface of his calm. “Someone <em>is </em>messing with us, and on purpose.”</p><p>The seemed to break the dam for the cadets, murmured conversation getting louder. “A prank gone wrong?” Kim asked above the rising hubbub.</p><p>David shook his head. “This is far too sophisticated for that.”</p><p>“Can we get it out of the wall or neutralize it without someone finding out?”</p><p>Kitty nodded and jammed the metal toothpick from her knife into something inside the gizmo, setting off a tiny shower of sparks. “Done. I nuked the transmitter circuit, but as far as the reporter’s concerned, everything’s working just fine. Give me five minutes to put it back together and it’ll be good enough for a casual glance.”</p><p>“Okay,” Tommy rubbed his face and tried to figure out the most rational next step. “Put it back, and then- we have to keep this quiet for now. We know General Ross, Selvig and Sterns are involved, and since someone got rid of Faiza we can assume she’s <em>not</em>, but she’s also still in Alaska so that doesn’t help. And until we know who else has their fingers in Project Rita, we can’t trust anyone in medical or J-Tech. Anyone <em>else</em> in J-Tech,” he amended when Kitty shot him a look.</p><p>Was Darcy involved? Did she know? He didn’t want to think that his judgement had been that far off, but what did he really know about her other than that she was fun, and she’d liked him? At the time, that had been enough.</p><p>David asked the other question Tommy’d been avoiding. “What about the Marshal?”</p><p>“You don’t think Marshal Danvers is involved in this,” Teddy objected immediately.</p><p>Doug looked up from his seat on the floor, brushing his blond hair back from his face in a self-conscious gesture that belied his absolute genius with everything software-related. “It is taking place on her base,” he offered hesitantly. “Could all of this really be going on without her knowledge?”</p><p>And Tommy considered it, but all he could see in his mind’s eye was Carol and Jess, striding triumphantly into the Shatterdome their first day with their matching shit-kicking swaggers. Try as he might, he couldn’t reconcile everything he knew about her, good and bad, with a CO who would let some Pentagon whackjob run secret experiments on cadets under her command. “It’s <em>Carol,</em>” was all he said. “Her <em>cat</em> is named <em>Chewbacca</em>. There’s no way.”</p><p>There was a pause when no-one said anything, and Tommy realized with a start that they were looking at him, waiting for <em>him</em> to come up with an answer. That was a dumb idea. He glanced at David, and at Kitty, but neither of them seemed like they were about to take over and save him from himself. “I’ll talk to her,” he said aloud, committing to God-knows-what. “Tomorrow—or I guess it’s today, now, but later. Once we’ve got a better sense of what this thing is and what it’s actually trying to do. I’ll take our report to her and see what she knows.”</p><p>“And if Marshal Danvers <em>is </em>in on it?” Trini asked. “What then?” Her voice hitched, just for a moment, a familiar vulnerability underneath the spikes. She was just a kid, younger than he and Billy had been when they’d first arrived at the Academy, and now even the PPDC—the mighty protectors of humankind—was proving to be as leaky and unstable a structure as the rest.</p><p>
  <em>What then? When everyone in authority might be against you, using you for purposes of their own- when the only people looking out for you were ordered to do it, and they don’t have the first fucking clue what to do either… </em>
</p><p>“Then we get you guys the hell out of here on the fastest transport available,” Tommy said firmly. “And we start fumigating this place. Because if there’s enough rot in the system for even people like Carol and Colonel Rhodes to go dark-side, we’ve got bigger problems.”</p><p>It wouldn’t happen; Carol wouldn’t lie to him. He’d lay it all out for her, she’d take over, and then someone who was better at leading would be in charge—and Tommy could go back to <em>causing</em> trouble, instead of fixing it.</p><hr/><p>Tommy did manage another hour or two of sleep after the impromptu meeting disbanded, but only because there was no hope of being able to function if he didn’t. Bringing two very large cups of coffee and a bag of doughnuts to David’s quarters had been partially selfish desperation for sugar and caffeine to jump-start his brain, partially some unaccountable urge to make David smile. The coffee got a smile, the doughnuts more of an eye-roll, but that left more for him so whatever. The guy obviously had no taste when it came to breakfast foods.</p><p>Kitty and Doug’s findings scrolled across the screen mounted over David’s desk, everything organized into tidy bar-charts and bullet-point lists. In another window, he paged through the cadets’ files, sorting the bits and pieces they knew into an order that made sense. Tommy shoved most of a cruller into his mouth and stood behind David’s chair, working his thumbs into the tight knots of muscle along his shoulders.</p><p>David made a soft, pleased sound at his touch, slumping forward and letting his eyes fall closed. “That was a great speech in the barracks, by the way,” David said, amusement tinging his voice warm. “Excellent use of mixed metaphor.”</p><p>“You got what I meant,” Tommy grumbled, twisting his knuckles into the space between David’s shoulderblade and his spine.</p><p>Air hissed between David’s teeth and he dropped his head further, stretching under Tommy’s hands. “I did. Righteous indignation looks good on you.”</p><p>Tommy couldn’t resist the temptation—didn’t try that hard, to be real—and pressed his lips to the soft skin beneath David’s right ear. It was better than thinking about betrayal and lies, or trying to imagine Carol’s reactions when Tommy dropped this mess in her lap. Undeterred by his distraction attempt, David kept talking. “Whatever Project Rita is, it’s been going on since before the cadets got here. I pulled their original files, and they were hand-selected. All of them, right out of <em>high school</em>.”</p><p>That was definitely not normal protocol. “They’re decent recruits, though. I know I complained at the beginning, but they’ve got potential. Even Scott’s perceptive—when he wants to be,” Tommy said.  </p><p>“Mmm.” David agreed, then the tension was back in his spine. “Not about everything.”</p><p>Tommy realized a beat too late that there was danger in that topic, however accidentally he’d opened the door. He let go of David’s shoulders and perched on the edge of his desk instead.</p><p>David pushed the data pad away and leaned back in his chair, the whole thing tipping on its pivot when he did. “There. That’s all I’ve got, added to the report Doug sent over. It’s up to you and Carol now.”</p><p>He frowned at Tommy and the mood in the room changed, slipping from a casual ops meeting to something a lot less predictable. “Last night,” David started, then stopped again. Tommy tensed, the hair rising on the back of his neck. <em>Here be dragons. </em>“Cadet Scott raised a good question, and we should probably get it over with. <em>A</em><em>re</em> we in a relationship?”</p><p>Sitting on the edge of David’s desk, tension screwing its way into his ribcage, Tommy frowned right back. “I mean… we’re fucking. It’s a <em>kind</em> of relationship. But that’s not what you’re asking about,” he finished, resigned.</p><p>Here it came, the ‘I like you, but not enough for that’ talk. He braced for it and hated himself for the expectation all at the same time. Because Tommy was ungrateful. He had friends, he had his co-pilots, his <em>twin—</em>he would never really be alone. But at the same time he also had the unswerving, unshakable certainty: <em>everybody leaves.</em></p><p>Call it shrapnel from his parents’ divorce, or his grandfather walking out, or some other childhood damage of the kind that therapists loved to poke pins into…</p><p>David would leave him behind as well. No matter how good the sex was, or how hard Tommy tried to do things right. That part was inevitable. The worst was that it had come so early. He’d been sure that he’d have more time, this time. Had it been the cadets knowing? Or maybe anticipation had been better than the reality of dealing with Tommy’s nonsense.</p><p>“If that’s all this is going to be to you, then we’re not on the same page,” David said, his frown turning into a grimace. “I told you up front I wasn’t willing to settle for being a distraction.” That had <em>not</em> been on the list of expected responses.</p><p>“No!” Tommy yelped quickly, before David could say anything else. “That’s not what I meant. I’m not- that is- it’s not ‘all.’ Not the way you mean.” He ran his hand through his hair. It was getting too long, getting in his eyes. He’d have to get it buzzed again soon if he didn’t want to run afoul of regulations-</p><p>“Tommy? Don’t fugue out on me. This is important. To me, anyway.”</p><p>“It is! Important. To me too.” He let out an agonizing breath, but it wasn’t going to save him from the metaphorical equivalent of pulling out his own teeth with pliers. What could he possibly say? <em>‘Don’t go’</em> didn’t <em>mean</em> anything. But they were the only important words coming to him, and he couldn’t even force those out of his mouth. “You’re not a distraction.”</p><p>“Then what is it?”</p><p>“How the hell should I know?” The frustration bubbled up, David not giving him anything to work with beyond a look that had so much caution and wariness inside it that he had to look away. Why <em>would</em> anyone want him for something other than the physical? He was nothing but a hot mess with good intentions and a six-pack.</p><p>“We’re sleeping together, which has pretty much been the highlight of my year. But putting a name on it? That’s when shit goes to hell. I get into someone, relax for a second, then boom.” He traced a little mushroom cloud with his fingertips, half-aware that he was picking up speed and unable to stop himself. “Everything gets fucked up and terrible. If that’s a ‘relationship,’ then no, I sure as hell don’t want <em>that</em> again. And what are the other options, be like Billy and Teddy? I love them, but <em>fuck</em>—they’re so goddamned co-dependant sometimes they don’t know where one of them ends and the other begins, and I can’t <em>do</em> that. Not even for you.”</p><p>David shook his head, hurt still twisting in his eyes. “You’re so hung up on this self-pitying jag that you assume the worst from everyone. As though I’d lose your number just because—what? You have no functional brain-to-mouth filter?” David poked him in the knee and Tommy shifted uncomfortably.</p><p>“You know what I’m like. My track record sucks.”</p><p>“I’m familiar with some of it,” David studied him for a minute, like he was trying to ferret out Tommy’s secrets. Joke was on him—Tommy didn’t have the first fucking clue. Maybe that was a sign. If this thing they had was right, shouldn’t he be more sure about it? Billy sure as fuck hadn’t hesitated once Teddy’d swung into orbit. Billy’d been an idiot about a lot of <em>other</em> things, true, but Tommy’d had front-row-centre seats for the whole damned process and he’d <em>felt</em> them click into place. Like LEGO bricks, or rare-earth magnets.</p><p>Whatever <em>this</em> was, it wasn’t like that. Tommy had never believed in soulmates, but now the doubt was chewing at him. Maybe there was a Teddy-style perfect match for David out there somewhere, and Tommy was… what? Just getting in the way? Delaying the inevitable?</p><p>Tommy rubbed his forehead, trying to smooth away the headache that was threatening. “Look, maybe you were right-” A buzzer interrupted, saving him from himself.</p><p>David startled, his jaw setting firm. “This is technically my weekend,” he muttered, turning to answer the buzzer. His tone changed to surprise when the door slid open. “Cadet?”</p><p>Trini stood on the other side, closed down so tight that Tommy could practically see her muscles vibrating from the strain. He felt a little bad for feeling grateful for the interruption, but at least this way he didn’t have to deal with what he’d been about to say. He forced everything else away, jammed all his messy feelings into a tight little box before sliding off the desk to join David at the door.</p><p>“I’m looking for Ranger Maximoff.” She spotted Tommy over David’s shoulder and switched to speaking to him directly. “You weren’t in your quarters so I tried here.</p><p>“It’s bad, sir. We’re being pulled from the Shatterdome and sent back to Alaska, all six of us. Under orders from General Ross.”</p><hr/><p>Marshal Danvers was already in a meeting by the time Tommy got to her office, the echoes of her shouting echoing through the closed door and halfway down the hall. “<em>No goddamned jurisdiction over PPDC personnel</em>,” Tommy heard as he skidded to a halt, followed quickly by “<em>Let him try. I’ll make him eat every one of his gold stars!</em>”</p><p>It sounded like she’d already had the news, and—though he was ashamed to feel the wash of relief that came with the proof—like she was hearing about it for the first time. Carol was on their side. And she had her end of things momentarily under control, which left Tommy free to keep going down his list.</p><p>Tommy headed back the way he’d come, jogging for the elevator that would take him to J-Tech. But first, Alaska. He had both the Beaubiers in his phone from the last time he and Billy had done a training exercise with Nike Aurora, though his sporadic texts with Jeanne-Marie had mostly been a couple of ‘happy birthdays,’ some cat memes and a very sympathetic message—half in French—from when Billy’d been hurt. That one was still left on ‘read.’</p><p>He called Jean-Paul instead.</p><p>“Qu’est-ce que le fuck, le?”</p><p>“Nice to know some things never change.”</p><p>Tommy held the phone away from his ear while JP worked through what sounded like a pretty damned satisfying litany of insults in two of his home country’s official languages, only rejoining the conversation when the other pilot sounded like he was winding down.</p><p>“…<em>hosti de calisse. </em>If you’re calling to gloat, I don’t want to hear it.”</p><p>“Just ‘cause you couldn’t beat my record even when I was out of commission for months doesn’t mean you need to be sore about it,” Tommy replied sweetly. “Now’s the point where I’d usually try and set you off again by asking about Jeanne-Marie, but I don’t have the time. I’m calling because we need your help. <em>I</em> need your help.”</p><p>“What makes you think I have any interest in doing you favours, Maximoff?”</p><p>“Because there’s official fuckery afoot, and a squad of cadets heading your way are being targeted by some major assholes. If I’m right about how high this goes, we’re going to be able to put the screws to some very high-ranking officials in both the PPDC and the US Army.”</p><p>There was a pause, long enough that Tommy wondered if he’d been cut off, but then JP was back and sounding much more civil. “I need details. Then I’ll let you know if we’re in.”</p><hr/><p>The next conversation was probably going to involve a lot less cursing. Probably. Tommy’s inborn suspicious nature kept eating at him, a low-grade warning going off in the back of his mind, but he needed information that he couldn’t get on his own. And the part of him that still wanted to believe that he was a reasonable judge of character refused to believe that she could be part of the charade.</p><p>Selvig wasn’t anywhere to be seen when Tommy got to J-Tech, and he only stopped for a moment to give a loving pat to a piece of Magnus’ armour plating resting against the wall. The massive repair bays stretched for what felt like miles; they had to in order to accommodate the gargantuan machines. Magnus’ new Conn-pod was being installed as he passed by, a dozen little bodies swarming over her shoulders, the sparks and flares of welding torches blinking at him like fireflies.</p><p>Foster’s office was down the hall and he reluctantly left Magnus behind as he hurried on his way. He caught Darcy on her way out the door, her curls held up with three pencils jammed through a messy bun, and a couple of data pads under her arm. “Got a minute?” he asked quickly, steering her back into the otherwise empty office before someone could come along and spot him.</p><p>“Apparently yes? What would you do if I said no?” Darcy asked, an edge in her voice.</p><p>“Bat my eyelashes and hope to play on your amused disdain long enough to get my way.”</p><p>“Does that work for you?”</p><p>“You’d be surprised how often,” he joked with a grin that vanished a moment later. “I know you’re busy, but this is big. A conspiracy’s going down, my cadets might be in danger, and you have access to all kinds of technical reports and shit that might fill in the missing pieces.”</p><p>She didn’t seem super-convinced, but at least she wasn’t rolling her eyes. Sincerity-bomb time. It was the nuclear option, most effective when used sparingly. He took her hand, the one not wrapped around her data pads, and squeezed it. “Please, Darce. You’re one of the only people in this department I can trust.”</p><p>“Seriously?” Darcy stared him down. He widened his eyes and did his best to look as utterly vulnerable a supplicant as possible. “Puppy-dog eyes are <em>not</em> fair play. You’re a menace, you know that?” She snapped after a beat, taking her hand back.</p><p>“So you’ll help.”</p><p>“Duh. And I would have even without the emotional blackmail, so put the pout away.” She poked his lip back into place and <em>then</em> she rolled her eyes, but at that point it didn’t have any sting. “Watching you go all guard-dog over the cadets would actually be pretty cute, if it didn’t apparently involve world-shattering disasters. Tell me what’s going on, and I’ll tell you what I can do about it.”</p><hr/><p>
  <strong>Tommy: Any word frm Barton?</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Kate: thumbs-up</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Kate: He says he’ll take care of things at the Academy end. Bobbi &amp; Nat are talking to him again so he’s going to get them on-side. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Kate: bodyguard squad activated.</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Tommy: yr the best</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Kate: I know. :D </strong>
</p><hr/><p>Whoever Carol had been yelling at hadn’t been able to fix things fast enough, because the helo was coming to take the cadets to the airstrip, and Tommy had about five minutes to brief them before they’d be out of his reach. He found them on the stairs leading up to the roof, an armed guard at the door keeping a watchful eye on the process. He had a PPDC uniform on, but the face wasn’t one Tommy recognized—and he knew a <em>lot</em> of people.</p><p>“Come to collect my cadets,” he called out, and the guard went on full alert. Definitely not good.</p><p>“Ranger-” the security guy shifted his stance and moved down the stairs, like he was expecting Tommy to cause trouble. It was probably a fair assumption, but not <em>right</em> then. “They’re scheduled to depart. They’re not authorized to leave this area.” <em>And you’re not authorized to come in</em>, was the unspoken corollary.</p><p>“Of course. I get it. In that case, I need a minute with Oliver and Scott. We won’t go anywhere,” Tommy replied breezily, like this was all routine, and of <em>course</em> there was nothing wrong with him having a quick chat with his direct reports before they hauled ass off to their next duty station.</p><p>The guard stared him down. His hand dropped to the sidearm on his hip. Not drawing it yet, but one hundred percent ready to start some shit if Tommy pushed.</p><p><em>Yeah. I’m sure you are. </em> </p><p>Tommy met his gaze steadily, hands in his pockets. If he had a bō in his hands he could have the guy on the floor and begging for mercy in under five seconds, but unarmed he didn’t stand much of a chance. Didn’t mean <em>this</em> guy knew that. Especially since he wasn’t a Shatterdome regular.</p><p>A heartbeat passed. Another. The guard relaxed his hand and stepped aside, eyes still on Tommy. “One minute, then they’re boarding.”</p><p>“You do you, bro. Cadets!” Tommy called. “Thirty seconds of your time.”  </p><p>Tommie and Jason left the others behind and joined him at the foot of the stairs, their jaws set and expressions a matching pair of grim.</p><p>“This is bullshit-” Jason began in a hiss, looking back over his shoulder to see if the guard was listening. He was too far away to hear, probably.</p><p>Tommie nodded, her jaw set. “It has something to do with the Rita Project, there’s no way this timing is coincidence. Are you just going to let them-”</p><p>“No-one is just letting anyone do anything,” Tommy interjected before they could freak out in stereo. “I just overheard Marshal Danvers on the phone verbally ripping someone’s testicles out through his ears, and I called in the troops. This is just a short-term derail. It’s going to be okay.”</p><p>That shut them up for a moment, and Tommie looked a little less skeptical than Jason. At least she was giving him the benefit of the doubt.</p><p>“When you get to the Alaska Shatterdome, find the Beaubiers. They pilot Nike Aurora-”</p><p>“We know who the Beaubiers are,” Jason interrupted.</p><p>Tommy ignored him. “They’ll be looking for you. And Dr. Hussain’s there somewhere. She’s good people. If you get shuffled back to the Academy instead, find Barton. If he’s not around, Romanoff and Morse are being read-in as we speak. Once you land, wherever they end up taking you, find one of them. They’ll keep you safe.”</p><p>“Beaubier twins, Dr. Hussain, Barton, Romanoff, Morse,” Tommie repeated quietly, as though to sear the names into her memory. “And they’re on board, just like that?”</p><p>“You’re going to have to take it on faith for now. I’d add Jessica Drew to the list, but I couldn’t get through to her earlier and I’m not leaving this stuff on a voice mail.” Tommy replied, shrugging off the question.</p><p>“You’ve got a lot of people who trust you, sir,” Jason said, arms folded across his chest, but not nearly as aggressively as that first day here in the same stairwell.</p><p>He’d never really thought about it that way before, and he wasn’t entirely sure that he liked that feeling. If he was wrong—but he wasn’t wrong. And now was the right time to call in all his markers. “Yeah, God knows why,” Tommy joked, but the moment didn’t exactly inspire giggles.</p><p>“Cadets, time to go!” came the call from the door at the top of the stairs.</p><p>Tommy laid his hands on Tommie and Jason’s shoulders, speaking quickly in the seconds he had left. “Keep your squad close and have each other’s backs. We’ll have answers for you soon.”  </p><hr/><p>“How could you just let them go?” Tommy slammed into the Marshal’s office as though he had some kind of right to be there.</p><p>“I thought you didn’t care about the cadets.” Carol rose out of her seat and braced her hands on her desk, ready and waiting to serve back whatever challenge he threw in her face. Usually, he respected that. “We’re a working Dome, not a kindergarten? Sound familiar?”</p><p>“Whatever, that was bullshit and I was out of line,” Tommy dismissed the reminder, splaying his hands out on Carol’s desk and meeting her face to face. Some part of him remembered that he was supposed to be intimidated, respect the rank, but he happily ignored it. Sometimes people needed to be told off directly, none of this ‘permission to speak freely’ crap. After the morning he’d already had, being able to let loose on someone was a relief. “They’re being used—<em>we’re</em> being used and have been since the beginning. You can’t tell me that you’re okay with that.”</p><p>Carol grimaced and he knew he’d hit a sore spot. Good. “I’m not, but this came from way over my head. Just like their assignment in the first place.” Since when did she roll over and take that kind of thing? But more pressingly—</p><p>“And me? Was my involvement part of some political shadow agenda as well?”</p><p>“No. That one’s on me. I couldn’t keep an eye on them myself, Tom, not as closely as they needed. And I knew that if there was anything weird happening, you’d catch it.”</p><p>That didn’t track; why him? He was an instigator, not a fixer. “You can’t just drop this on me without a briefing! When did you plan on <em>telling</em> me-”</p><p>“Marshal!” Tommy’s building rant was cut off by a pounding at the office door. The door slid open and the whole damn gang tumbled through. It felt like it anyway, Darcy and David followed closely by Billy, Teddy, and <em>Jane Foster</em> of all people. They filled the small office and Foster slammed a data pad down on Carol’s desk, narrowly missing Tommy’s fingertips, seemingly unaware of how close she’d come to smashing him. “Trauma,” she announced, without any other preamble. “They’re trying to induce trauma-bonding, reinforced by theta-wave manipulation.”</p><p>Carol rolled with the interruption, straightening up and switching her attention away from Tommy to Dr. Foster and her merry men. “Back up, slow down, try again,” she ordered, and Foster grimaced.</p><p>“I got this.” Darcy gently elbowed her boss aside but spoke directly to Tommy instead. “After you left J-Tech I went digging, and then Jane caught me using her credentials so I told her what was going on. I know, I know, but you didn’t <em>exactly</em> tell me to keep it a secret from her, so. Anyway, we found this,” Darcy summoned up an image from the pad, a schematic of a Jaeger-type build that Tommy didn’t recognise. A skinny model with a whole lot of guns, and a Conn-pod that was much too small.</p><p>Jane cut back in. “Specs for semi-autonomous, single-pilot, mesh-networked Jaegers. And part of the project is a sub-operation they’re calling ‘RITA.’ <strong>R</strong>eproducible <strong>I</strong>nduced-<strong>T</strong>rauma <strong>A</strong>ctivation.”</p><p>“Single-pilot’s impossible,” Carol rejected the suggestion, glancing at the other pilots in the room as though for backup. “We know that. Everyone knows that.”</p><p>“Not if they’re networked, splitting the total load of five or six lighter-weight machines across all the pilots,” David corrected her, and the implications of that alone…</p><p>“A <em>five-or-six-person</em> drift?” Tommy replied, his total disbelief had to be as obvious on his face as it was in his voice. “Are they <em>insane</em>?”</p><p>“They’re trying to recreate <em>you</em>,” David replied, so serious that he couldn’t possibly be trying to mess with him. “You, Billy and Teddy, but with a less intense connection, spread out across more brains.”</p><p>“The cadets don’t trust each other enough to form solid bonds in any combination of pairs; how are they supposed to work as a six-pack?” Teddy asked, incredulous.</p><p>“That’s the ‘activation’ part, isn’t it? If they can force drift compatibility in otherwise incompatible people, then suddenly there are a lot more options for pilots. They can pick whoever will be most controllable and <em>force</em> them into a bridge,” Billy picked up the thread of the conversation, his arms folded tight across his chest and a familiar, comforting, murderous look in his eyes.</p><p>“Teddy and I were always drift-compatible, for the record,” Tommy corrected the room at large. “There are dozens of EEGs to prove it. The physical baseline was random chance. The rest took <em>work. </em>They can’t program that into people.”</p><p>“Expendable super-soldiers.” Carol ignored Tommy completely, flipping rapidly through the data Foster had brought them. “That’s what they’re trying to build. Masses of partially-autonomous drones piloted by people who are tied together by fear rather than empathy.”</p><p>“And if there’s a method for creating more pilots whenever they want-” Darcy paled.</p><p>“Then that’s where ‘acceptable losses’ comes in,” Tommy breathed out, finishing her sentence with the image of the redacted file floating in his mind’s eye. “What the <em>fuck? </em>What the actual fuck is wrong with these people?” he demanded, whirling on Carol like she would have any answers. She had to have answers, because if she didn’t, who would? He needed her to be the authority, to know what the hell was going on, to turn him around and aim him in the right direction.</p><p>The answers weren’t coming. Tommy paced back and forth the couple of steps he could manage in the crowded office, every new thought making him angrier. “The coast needs us—the <em>world</em> needs us—but that doesn’t mean we have to put up with a system that treats human beings like cheap renewable resources. Jaeger tech only <em>works</em> if we trust each other,” he ranted, stabbing his open palm with his fingers to make his point, all the frustrations and anger built up inside coming out in an impassioned speech that was taking on a life of his own, the words tumbling out in an unfiltered torrent.</p><p>“We have to trust each other with our lives, and more than that—with our memories, and hopes, and fears and- and <em>all</em> the bullshit that builds up over the course of living. That takes guts. That’s the whole reason rangers <em>exist</em>. Because we can take that trust and do something good with it. And turning <em>empathy</em> into something that fucking <em>cold, </em>hurting <em>kids</em> in the hope that if you damage them enough, in the right way, they can be turned into disposable cannon fodder? That’s going to end up causing more destruction to humanity than anything a kaiju could hope to do.”</p><p>The door slid open again, cutting Tommy off for the second time in ten minutes. Col. Rhodes strode in, hand on the door jamb, caught off-guard for a second by the sheer number of people in the office. “Carol-”</p><p>“Doesn’t anybody actively wait to be told to come in anymore?” she asked, exasperation writ large on her face.</p><p>“No time. We have a problem.” Rhodes saw Tommy in the crowd and his mouth set even more grimly than before. “The cadets’ plane went down north of here—I just got the call. They never even made it out of California.”</p><p>The office rang with raised voices, each trying to talk over the other until no-one could make any sense out of anything. Carol slammed a heavy book down on her desk, the sudden sharp <em>BANG</em> echoing off the walls. The noise instantly died away. “Shut it,” she snapped. “Everyone except Rhodey. Where’d they go down?”</p><p>“North of Sacramento, Snow Mountain Wilderness. That hiking ground in the middle of the Mendocino forest.”</p><p>“What about survivors?” Tommy blurted out before Carol could reply.</p><p>Rhodey shook his head. “No news either way. Either comms are dead or they’re not on site anymore. I’ve got the AFRCC mobilizing search and rescue, but it’s going to take them hours to get their asses in gear. I’m taking some helos for a fly-over right now, so I technically need your sign-off.”</p><p>“You’d do it anyway-”</p><p>“Damn straight. But if you authorize before I violate intra-agency jurisdiction, everyone’s life gets easier. And I need boots on the ground. Tree cover’s a bitch in that area, so we won’t be able to get good visuals from the air if they’ve left the crash site.”</p><p>Carol nodded. “I can give you anyone you need from security and the MPs, but that’s not going to be enough people for coverage without the Air Force kicking in some help.”</p><p>“I’ll go,” Tommy said firmly.</p><p>“That’s not your job, Ranger,” Rhodey dismissed the offer. “You’re not trained for wilderness S&amp;R, and the last thing I need is to have to pull <em>you</em> out of a glacier lake on top of everything else.”</p><p>“It <em>is</em> my job, Colonel. The cadets didn’t get handed over to Alaska, so as far as I can tell, I’m still their CO.” Arms folded, he placed himself at the apex of the triangle formed by Carol and Rhodey. Billy nodded his approval from the other side of the room and Tommy smiled. <em>Just try and move me.</em> “And I’m going after them, with or without Shatterdome support.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Chapter 13</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Wherein a rescue attempt is made, and some truths come to light.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The hangar was hopping like mad by the time Tommy got there, only a brief stop by the quartermaster to beg and threaten for the gear he’d need for this one. He wasn’t the only Ranger volunteering himself, either. Once he’d worn Rhodey down and opened the door, everyone else had followed him through. Everyone but the girls, and they’d have been knee-deep in the chaos as well if Yankee Hawker wasn’t on standby.</p><p>To be honest, Tommy would have preferred to have them suiting up with him instead of Billy, his brother’s fancy knee braces visible as creases underneath his uniform pants if you knew where to look. Shouldering his pack, Tommy turned to make the suggestion—Billy would be better off staying at the Shatterdome, or at whatever base camp they established, coordinating the rescue teams instead of hiking through god-knows-what on the mountainside-</p><p>Billy’s head jerked up like he could feel Tommy’s eyes on him, and his eyes narrowed, his jaw set. “Don’t say it.”</p><p>“I didn’t.” Tommy put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. He couldn’t help the worried glance, though, and Billy held his glare. Fine. Let him blow his knees out on uneven ground, see if Tommy cared. He had enough to worry about, considering no signal had come in from the cadets or their pilot or guard, and he had no way of knowing whether the kids were even <em>alive</em>—he didn’t have energy to worry about his dumbass little brother being a dumbass, on top of all that. Serve him right if he got hurt again.</p><p>Idiot.</p><p>“Time’s ticking, ladies and gents.” Colonel Rhodes strode through the hangar in his flight gear, jumphawk pilots trailing in his wake. “Space for six on each helo, get your asses loaded in or you’ll be left behind.”</p><p>“Oh hey,” Tommy heard Teddy greeting someone behind him. “You made it just in time.”</p><p>“I had to brief Sofia on some of the new day shift protocols,” David replied, and Tommy’s heart seized tight. He turned to find David geared up and joining the group. He’d changed his usual service uniform for BDUs, pressed crisp and clean like they were right out of the package, along with combat boots, a pack—a <em>sidearm</em>?</p><p><em>No no no- not you too. </em>“Why are you here?” The words blurted out of Tommy’s mouth before he could stop them. “You don’t do fieldwork. You’re a desk guy.”</p><p>“Nice. Colonel Rhodes needs people, and <em>someone</em> has to be on hand to pull your ass out of the fire,” David replied dryly, throwing Tommy a glare not too different from Billy’s. Teddy gave a low whistle and backed away, leaving Tommy without backup. “I’m Defense Corps, and fully field trained, just like you.”</p><p>“It’s not the same,” Tommy insisted, his brain whirling through a hundred—a thousand!—terrible scenarios. “You did boot camp, sure, but that’s not the same thing as actually deploying on a regular basis.” What if it hadn’t been a technical malfunction? What if the plane had been shot down and the perps were still out there, waiting for more targets? He’d come so close to losing Billy, more than once, and nightmares of landing to find the cadets’ broken, lifeless bodies were playing out constantly behind his eyes. Now David’s corpse was added to the images, shards of terror like knives slicing into Tommy’s skin.</p><p>David flinched, and his reply was decidedly frosty. “My weapons and fitness quals are up to date and with scores in the ninety-eighth percentile, thank you very much. And it’s not like you’re boots-on-the-ground infantry either; all <em>your</em> deployment time is spent inside a 250-foot-tall armoured golem.” He didn’t seem to understand. He needed to stay here, that was the important thing, in the Shatterdome where Tommy knew he’d be safe-</p><p>“What happens if there’s movement in the Breach?” Tommy grabbed on the next most important thing in his increasing desperation, ignoring the movement of people around them as groups loaded into the waiting helos. “Who’s going to run Hawker?”</p><p>“There won’t be another event so soon after the last one. It’ll be months before the Breach opens again. And if it does, Mantega can do it. She’s my deputy and she’s been running the night shift for years. She’s got it down cold. What is <em>wrong</em> with you today? We don’t have time for you to get weird right now,” David asked, closing into Tommy’s space and planting his feet. Stubborn asshole, just like Billy, determined to fling himself head-first into danger and totally ignore what that did to the people around him-</p><p>“Let’s go, people!” someone called in the distance.</p><p>“Nothing’s <em>wrong</em> with me. But this isn’t where we need you.” And that was true; David was supposed to be eyes in the sky, his guiding star. If the cadets were in trouble and Tommy got in trouble trying to get to them, how could David help if he wasn’t where he was supposed to be?</p><p>David’s whole mood dropped, his expression so totally closed off that Tommy couldn’t get any kind of read on him. “If you don’t think I’m capable of watching your back, just say it and get it over with,” he snapped.</p><p>“I didn’t say incapable, I just meant not… not what you’re supposed to be doing,” Tommy fumbled, everything coming out wrong. “You don’t know what it’s like to get your hands dirty the same way.”</p><p>David made a disgusted noise and turned away. “I’m going on the op. It’s not your call to make.”</p><p>“David!” Tommy called after him, but David didn’t turn around. He felt a presence on either side and sighed, his shoulders slumping.</p><p>“Smooth,” Billy said from his right.</p><p>“It’s like a train wreck, hold the slow motion,” Teddy marvelled from his left.</p><p>“Some help you guys are.” Tommy grabbed his pack and stalked toward the only helo left on the pad that still had empty seats. He ended up next to David, who pointedly put his ear protection on the moment Tommy sat down.</p><p><em>So that’s how it’s going to be</em>. Fine. All he could let himself worry about right now was finding the cadets and getting them home. Fixing the rest of the mess was going to have to wait.</p>
<hr/><p>He got the silent treatment all the way to the drop zone, David just gesturing at the noise-cancelling headphones he was wearing every time Tommy tried to speak. He couldn’t stand to acknowledge the sympathetic looks he was getting from his co-pilots on the seat across from him, so Tommy stared out the window instead. There was the national park, stretching out in a half-dozen shades of green below them, rocky peaks rising through the trees. And there, along one side of a mountain, a long black scar with smoke still trickling up into the sky at the far end.</p><p>Nothing moved in the trees, no waving people waiting for them to land, or flares shooting up to call the rescuers in.</p><p><em>Come on, kids.</em> Tommy caught himself coming close to something that sounded like a prayer, and his fingers drummed faster against the bench. The helo was descending too slow; he was half-tempted to grab a chute and go for it, if it would have given him any kind of head start.</p><p>Billy’s hand rested on his knee and it was only when the pressure stopped him from moving that Tommy realized he’d been bouncing his leg in the same rhythm as his drumming fingers. The weight helped, but it wasn’t enough to contain the pressure threatening to leak out his <em>ears</em> if he didn’t get to move soon.</p><p>It took the pilot an agonizing few minutes to find somewhere to set down long enough to let them out and then she was lifting off again to let the next transport down. Tommy ducked and ran away from the clearing, joining the other rescuers as they formed up around Col. Rhodes a few yards away.</p><p>“Team one, you’re a go—over,” Rhodey spoke into the walkie mic clipped to his jacket.</p><p>“No-one’s at the wreckage, sir,” the voice crackled over the speaker, and Tommy inched closer to eavesdrop more effectively. “No sign of anyone. No bodies present, and cockpit’s empty. Over.”</p><p>“No pilot? Over.” Rhodey asked, a frown creasing his forehead.</p><p>“No furniture. Looks like the pilot ejected shortly before the crash. Over.”</p><p>“What the fuck?” Tommy interjected, pushing his way forward to the front of the crowd. “Ask them if the chutes are gone. Maybe there was mechanical failure and they all bailed.”</p><p>“Do you mind?” Rhodey asked caustically. “Do I sit in LOCCENT and remind you to punch things occasionally?”</p><p>“No,” Tommy shot back. “That’s David’s job.”</p><p>Colonel Rhodes stared him down. Tommy held his gaze.</p><p>“You know, you’re damned lucky Carol likes you.” Rhodey’s delivery was flat and definitely not amused. Whatever; Tommy could live with the eyeroll if it got him answers faster. “Team one, check the chutes. Any still on board? Over.”</p><p>The seconds ticked by waiting for the answer, Tommy’s blood pressure ratcheting up a notch with every one that passed. Finally, <em>finally,</em> the radio crackled again. “Found the chutes, sir. Only one is missing. Over.”</p><p>“Repeat that, team one? Over.”</p><p>“Only one chute is missing. Seven remain on board. Someone bailed out other than the pilot, but not everyone. They must have survived the crash and scattered once on the ground.”</p><p>One chute gone- the guard. It couldn’t have been anyone else; none of the cadets would have left the others behind. “This was deliberate,” Tommy said aloud and was met with incredulous looks all around. “The pilot set up the crash and then he and his MP buddy ejected. Someone must have been on hand to pick them up after they bailed out, leaving the cadets behind.”</p><p>“To what? Die in the woods? That’s the least efficient way of getting rid of someone I’ve ever heard of,” Rhodey dismissed the idea.</p><p>“It is, if getting rid of them was your end goal…” Tommy trailed off, his suspicions still nebulous and not ready to be put into words. If he was right, though, then the cadets were still alive, probably on the run, and hopefully still in reasonable shape. At least for the moment.</p><p>“Orders, Colonel?”  </p><p>“Search teams of two, so grab a buddy. Fan out along the obvious paths first, see if the cadets left any signs. Check-ins by radio on the half hour. SAR’s coming with the dogs but it’ll be a couple of hours before they get here.”</p><p>Teams of two- that was okay. Teddy would make sure David didn’t do anything too stupid. Probably.</p><p>Now if only Tommy could be sure about himself and Billy. Saying that they egged each other on wasn’t accurate, in the sense that they usually didn’t have to. One of them had an idea and the other knew what the outcome was going to be, whether he agreed with it or not. It was easier that way than trying to put words around the edges of the gas clouds of his thoughts. They came out wrong every time he tried.</p><p>Tommy turned to grab Billy and get their radio and packs, only Billy and <em>Teddy</em> were already being shown a map and pointed toward a section of forest, the big fat <em>traitors.</em></p><p>They must have felt his glare, because Teddy caught his eye, raised an eyebrow, then cocked his head meaningfully in David’s direction. Double traitors. Tommy was starting to get really damned fed up with Teddy’s stupid fixations on happily-ever-after and white picket fences.</p><p>Those were epilogues to other people’s stories. Tommy? The odds were pretty clear that he was going to die young.</p><p>“Alleyne and Maximoff the first, you’re up,” Rhodey gestured them over to the officer directing the search teams and Tommy resigned himself even as his stomach sank. A few hours in the woods with David wasn’t a disaster. Not yet. Maybe it would give Tommy the chance to fix his stupid foot-in-mouth moment, if he could only come up with the right words. Or better yet, they’d find the cadets early and intact, they’d all go home and Tommy could make it up to David properly. Apologies tended to land better when they came with beer and blow jobs.</p><p>They shouldered their packs and logged their coordinates, though David got the radio. Fair, he supposed; Tommy had already considered using it to call Billy and Teddy and find out just how long he could sustain a raspberry. They were assigned a sector that extended up the mountainside, a path barely visible through the trees.</p><p>The look of it as they started off suggested that years of hikers had picked their way through the underbrush. Some of the branches along the trail were newly broken, green peeking out from beneath splintered bark, their leaves crushed. But that could have been from debris from the crash as easily as it could have been from the cadets. Tommy snapped a photo with his phone, just in case, and kept moving along the trail at David’s heels. The voices of the other searchers echoed off the rocky slope, making it difficult to tell where the calls were coming from.</p><p>Minutes passed, marked only by the times they stopped to call out names, and David still hadn’t said anything to let Tommy off the hook.</p><p>“About earlier—I do think you’re capable. And useful,” Tommy tried to start the conversation himself, picking up the train of thought about where he’d figured it had gone off the rails.</p><p>A deeply pained look settled in on David’s face and he pinched the bridge of his nose like <em>he</em> had a headache starting. “Drop it, Tommy. Please.”</p><p>Maybe not.</p><p>“I thought you wanted me to talk more.” Tommy knew damn well that David hadn’t meant ‘let whatever passes through your brain spill out of your mouth,’ but there were times when he felt an awful lot like a Jaeger, with someone else sitting comfortably behind the controls.</p><p>“I changed my mind.” And that would have been that, except David stopped, seemed to reconsider, and picked up the conversation again. “No, you know what? Fine. We’ll do this now. You wanted me to stay back at the Shatterdome, but do you know what <em>my</em> worst fear is? The thing that keeps me up at night?”</p><p>Tommy shook his head. David stood six, maybe seven feet away from him, higher up the path, the afternoon sun shining through the trees and casting warm brown highlights on his skin. His calm felt so much worse than yelling would have been, the wall up between them once more.</p><p>“Losing my pilots. My people. Mission control… you see it like a desk job. What it really means is that when things go wrong, I’m the one with the birds-eye view.”</p><p>“It’s better than being the one in danger,” Tommy broke in. “What’s the point in Rangers busting our asses to keep people safe if you guys try and fling yourselves into it anyway?”</p><p>“Because it comes for us whether you’re there or not.” David jabbed a finger at him and Tommy flinched. “<em>You</em> get catharsis. We have to settle for therapy.</p><p>“When I was in training I used to think the worst thing in the world would be screwing up and having pilots die because of me. But you know what’s worse? Doing everything right and having to watch your friends die anyway. Watch them through viewscreens and data streams and hear their voices over a goddamned <em>radio</em> and know that’s the only grace you’re ever going to get.”</p><p>David’s voice didn’t crack but it wobbled, and that more than anything else brought it all home. Tommy’d been an ass in ways he hadn’t even understood, so much worse than doing it on purpose. He wanted to apologize again, try to explain, but he bit his tongue, hard.</p><p>“And the real nightmare is being helpless when it happens. Sitting on my ass and watching tragedy play out through a glass wall and my HUD; life and death turned into… <em>data</em> and <em>tactics</em>. It becomes so fucking <em>theoretical</em>.” He spat that like a curse word, and Tommy’s chest tightened at the sound.</p><p>David drew in a breath and when he spoke again his voice was steadier, more detached again. “At least Billy can get strategy to you faster. Maybe that’s the way it’ll go from here; tactical specialists bridged in with every team, and send the rest of us back to the junior leagues.”</p><p>“It still wasn’t enough.” Tommy moved up the path, trying to get closer, to reach out—he was so much better with anything but words. “He was riding shotgun when the Langs bit it. None of us were fast enough that day.”</p><p>“That’s not-” David’s shoulders sagged, and he shook his head and pulled himself tall again. “Doesn’t matter. I’ve lived my nightmares, same as you. That’s all. And sometimes they come knocking.”</p><p>Tommy made it up the path to where he stood but David pushed ahead, leaving the thinning cover to step into the sunlight. The mountainside was clear from here on, all rocks and scrub rather than trees. He paused—let out a deep breath that almost sounded like a sigh—and looked around, his glance falling on Tommy for a lingering minute. “We’ve got cadets to find. Do you see anything?”</p><p>Compartmentalization it was. Tommy tried to ignore the gnawing guilt and fear as he scanned the forest canopy for any signs of life other than the search parties. At least it was a sunny day, they were on solid ground, and no-one was shooting at anybody. A faint smell of ozone stung his nose just on the edge of his perception, from no source he could name. “Nothing this direction. Further up the cliff? Or do we radio base camp and call this one good?”</p><p>“Give it another few; we haven’t seen where this trail goes yet.”</p><p>“Unless it ends at a Starbucks, I’m not interested.” That got a snort that sounded a little like laughter from David, so maybe he wouldn’t be in the doghouse forever.</p><p>Buoyed by that little frisson of hope, Tommy jogged further up the path. The soil gave way to rock underfoot, and while Tommy like to think he saw footprints or scuffs in the dirt, he couldn’t have said whether they were human or animal, from an hour ago or a week. When had been the last time it had rained?</p><p>He tried calling their names a few times but got nothing back except echoes and the distant bubble of running water. He headed back the way he’d come, just to the turn in the path to wait for David. Shadows moved across the rock wall on his left and Tommy caught an image out of the corner of his eye. He’d missed it the first time, too focused on watching the treeline for movement, but now-</p><p>“Got something,” he announced with a surge of triumph and hope as David rounded the corner. He gestured and David’s gaze followed, landing on the arrow lightly scratched into the side of the cliff. It pointed up a different path, one that looked like a shorter, sharper climb upwards. “An arrow, and it looks fresh.”</p><p>“It could be a hiker’s marker, but it’s worth checking out. I’ll call it in.” David got on the radio to basecamp and rattled off their coordinates while Tommy picked his way up the beginning of the steeper path. Rocks had scattered across the path a couple of feet in, some as big as three feet across and all the same colour as the cliffs, though dark streaks across some of them looked almost like… carbon? “We’re following to investigate. Over and out.”</p><p>“It looks like they headed for the summit, maybe to get a signal out, or get a better view?” Tommy hazarded a guess, balancing on top of two boulders. “The path’s clear past here.” He held out a hand to help David up, a gesture David ignored. He bounded over the blockade effortlessly and Tommy took the unspoken rebuke with a resigned nod.</p><p>Something was teasing at the edge of his awareness about the boulderfall, the dark scars on the rocks and matching ones on the cliff above where they must have been dislodged. David kept moving, but the back of Tommy’s neck prickled, a hyperawareness of something <em>not right</em> that he couldn’t shake. “Hang on. Do those look like plasma burns to you?” he called, and David turned back.</p><p>“Couldn’t be. There hasn’t been a kaiju breaching the miracle mile in years, and plasmacasters don’t have the range to hit <em>here</em> from the Bay.” David stopped by Tommy’s side and followed his gaze, a frown creasing his brow. “On the other hand-”</p><p>A streak of blue energy sizzled as it creased the air between them. The air filled with the smell of ozone, Tommy’s skin burning in a hot line across his cheek. A second followed at hip-level, this time with ozone and the reek of melting plastic.</p><p>“Go!” Tommy yelped, grabbing David’s hand and taking off at a run, two more bolts of energy searing black lines into the rock wall behind them. David let Tommy drag him along for a few steps and then he was running as well, a couple of steps behind.  </p><p>The sizzle of plasma and tumbling cascades of crashing, falling rocks echoed behind them, rocks kicking up as blasts struck the ground near their feet. Tommy and David fled up the path. Any questions he might have had about intentionality behind the crash were now firmly answered, panic flooding his system and then getting consumed by the adrenaline that followed.</p><p>
  <em>Gotta get out of here, get David safe, then beat some heads in-</em>
</p><p>The path wound upwards, until it didn’t.</p><p>Tommy skidded to a halt. He wobbled at the edge of the precipice, arms pinwheeling as tiny rocks tumbled down into the broad canyon that lay open at his feet.</p><p>“Watch out!”</p><p>Something snagged the back of his shirt and hauled. He tumbled backward to land on David, his hand still clutching the collar of Tommy’s jacket.</p><p>“Nice save. Thanks.” Tommy scrambled to his feet and brushed the dust from his pants. He sucked in air, his heart pounding, bracing for the impact and the burn.</p><p>Nothing. The only sounds were their heavy breathing and the rattle of tiny stones bouncing down into the void. No footsteps, no shouting, no radio calls for reinforcements—</p><p>“Is it over? Who was shooting at us?” he murmured, the rocks digging into his back as he tried to hold still.</p><p>David shook his head, creeping forward and peering cautiously around the bend in the trail. “Weapon embankment? Automated system? I don’t see anyone.” He glanced around, picked up a fist-sized stone, and flung it the way they’d come. A sizzling burst of fire repeated, the rock disintegrating in a shower of dust that rained down over the path. “Ah. Gun turret, probably on a motion detector. We’re not getting down that way.”</p><p> “Radio for help,” Tommy suggested, pacing back toward the canyon. “One good thing, if the cadets got shot, there’d definitely be bodies. And there aren’t.”</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em>.” David thumbed the switch on the radio and got nothing in response, not even a static burst. “Radio’s fried, and part of it’s melted. A bolt must have clipped it. Your phone?”</p><p>Tommy dug it out of his pocket, but the little X over the bar graph wasn’t exactly inspiring. “No signal. It must be the rock.”</p><p>“That or a jammer, considering we’ve been ambushed,” David suggested darkly.</p><p>“The power of positive thinking.”   </p><p>“Is this really the time for jokes?” David snapped, and Tommy shrugged.</p><p>“Some people drink as a coping mechanism.”</p><p>There were no further bursts from the mysterious shooter, and Tommy took stock of the situation. They stood on a plateau that wrapped partway around the mountain, steep rock wall on one side that was shielding them from the plasma cannon—for however long that lasted—and sheer cliff face dropping down to the treeline on the other. And in front, the canyon that had almost become his grave.</p><p>Both of them crept forward much more cautiously and peered over the edge. The split in the rocks had to be about twelve, maybe fifteen feet wide, and thanks to the way the other side was sunken down and the rise in the ground they stood on, the gap was totally invisible from their side of the crevasse.</p><p>Heart still beating a tattoo inside his chest, Tommy grabbed a fistful of pebbles and tossed them down into the shadows. Some of them bounced off the outcroppings that blocked his view of the bottom, but others made it all the way down. “Two, two and a half seconds? How deep is that?” He tried to do the math but gave up and shrugged. “Hundred feet, maybe. Not good. You don’t think they’re-”</p><p>“There’s no blood anywhere,” David replied, not sounding as sure of himself as Tommy wanted to hear. “If they fell, <em>someone</em> would have bumped against the rocks. And why would all six of them go over? I mean, one dumbass, sure-”</p><p>“That’s great, thank you.”</p><p>“-but even if one of them fell, there’d still be five other people caught here. And there’s nowhere they could have gone except-”</p><p>“Down,” Tommy finished the sentence along with David. “But why? Why not just sit here and wait for help to come?”</p><p>David paced along the canyon edge, until he knelt at an irregularly-shaped divot broken into the ledge. The colour of the dirt was darker there, and he looked out at the canyon like he was doing calculations in his head. “I’m not sure it was on purpose.” He rose to his feet and started pacing it out. “They come up here, running like we were, trying to stay ahead of the plasma fire. They get this far, whoever’s in the lead doesn’t see the canyon and doesn’t have your dumb luck.”</p><p>“Not luck. You,” Tommy pointed out, which was off-topic but felt important. David gave him a small smile and kept talking as he worked through his thoughts.</p><p>“There’re rocks down below, like they broke off this ledge and scattered. So someone hits the edge and goes over. The others don’t have any way to call for help and they’re not going to leave anyone behind, so what would you do?” he shrugged, the answer obvious.</p><p>“Climb down and get them. No man left behind.”</p><p>Tommy gauged the distance between their path and the other side; too far to jump. But if he held on to the edge and went down carefully, there were probably enough hand and footholds to climb down, at least to the next big shelf. “I’m going to check it out, see if I can see any more of these fresh marks.”</p><p>“Yeah, not sure that’s a great idea. We still have no idea what happened to the cadets.”</p><p>Tommy shrugged. “And we won’t if I don’t try. Besides; I have you to shoot off the flares to call for help if I screw this up.”</p><p>He sat on the edge, more dirt and pebbles raining down with every movement. It was easy enough to flip himself around and grab the spot David had found, Tommy’s fingers fitting neatly into indents already left in the fresh soil. “Yeah, someone did this before me,” he reported, lowering himself down and lodging his foot into a fist-sized divot in the wall and stretching for the next one. “There are good climbing holds all the way d-”</p><p>He set his foot on a rock that stuck out of the canyon wall, reaching for the next handhold down. The rock wobbled. He grabbed for the handhold but the earth crumbled to sand in his hand as the stone underneath his foot slid free.</p><p>The rock fell and Tommy fell too, the adrenaline rush and the wind around him paling in comparison to the fear as the canyon walls blocked out the blue sky.</p><p>
  <em>He’s gonna say ‘I told you so.’ </em>
</p><p>
  <em>This is gonna hurt. </em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Chapter 14</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The wind knocked out of Tommy as he landed hard on his shoulder and rolled, the heavy pack absorbing some of the shock. He scrabbled against the rock as he kept sliding, trying to get some purchase, slow himself down-</p><p>Not soon enough.</p><p>“Tommy!” He heard David’s yell from far away, wind in his ears as he tumbled over the side. There was only a second to get his legs underneath him as he tumbled, catching himself against the dirt and rock wall of the canyon.</p><p>It wasn’t straight up and down here, sloping enough that he skidded and slid, rolled but didn’t fall <em>exactly</em>, dust plumes arcing behind him. It choked the air and stung his eyes, tiny rocks pinging off his hands and head. He had to keep his feet under himself, arms out, grab any handhold he could-</p><p>He hit bottom a lot slower than he would have if he’d still been in free-fall. The impact still jarred him enough to send him to his knees and shock him right up through to his skull, teeth knocking together.</p><p>Rocks kept falling, pebbles bouncing off his back as he fought to suck in air. David was still yelling, cursing now, and getting louder every second. “Of all the stupid, reckless, goddamn <em>idiotic</em>…”</p><p>David was still swearing at Tommy as he slid down the side in a much more controlled way than Tommy had managed, jumping as soon as he was close enough and skidding to a stop at Tommy’s side. “What the hell was that? Did you hit your head? You could have <em>died</em>, and then guess who would be stuck hauling your <em>corpse </em>back to base camp?” He was checking Tommy for injuries as he bitched him out, running his hand over Tommy’s head like he was testing for leaks.</p><p>“It’s fine. As Teddy would remind me if he were here, it’s not like I have that many brain cells to lose,” Tommy grumbled, the dirt crunching underneath him as his chest unlocked and he could finally get a breath in, and words out. He grabbed David’s hand and used it as leverage to pull himself to standing. “I didn’t hit my head, I didn’t black out. Gonna have some funky bruises tomorrow, but that’s nothing new.”</p><p>“Idiot. What the hell were you thinking?” David checked the back of Tommy’s head despite his protests, his fingers finding a sore spot that made Tommy wince. David’s fingers felt good against Tommy’s scalp, and he leaned into the touch before remembering that David was still mad at him.</p><p>“That we don’t leave anyone behind. And now you’re down here with me instead of up on that nice safe ledge, so really, who’s the idiot?” Tommy pointed out with an attempt at a lopsided grin. The gratitude and the relief that David’s presence brought with it was something he didn’t want to poke at right now, just—the knowledge that David still cared, at least about his safety. He held on to the thread of hope, and the echo of Teddy’s voice somewhere in the back of his head chiding him for over-reacting.</p><p>This was why caring sucked. It got dirty fingerprints all over <em>everything</em>.</p><p>“Can’t argue that point,” David muttered, almost quiet enough that it might not have been meant as a reply. “Okay,” he said, a little louder. “So now what. We don’t have a lot of choice in direction, unless we try and climb back up the side.” He slowly turned around, taking in their location. The canyon split off in both directions, the left side narrowing to a cleft and ending at a steep, unclimbable rock face. The right side kept going, shadows that looked like more overhangs dark against the canyon walls.</p><p>“And face a laser turret un-armed? No thanks. We need to find the cadets and find a different route out before someone sends another murder-bot after us,” Tommy replied, bravado so much easier than thinking too hard about their situation. He checked his phone again, not expecting to see any improvement considering he was now <em>down</em> the canyon. The reality was worse, the screen smashed and the whole thing dead. “Fuck.”</p><p>David winced, but shook his head as he checked his. “No signal down here either. It wouldn’t have mattered. Sucks though,” he offered, and Tommy took what sympathy he could get.</p><p>“Okay, fine. No phones, no radio. If the cadets are down here, there’s only one way they could have gone.” Tommy nodded to the right and made a half-hearted attempt to brush some of the sand off his pants. Moving hurt, but not enough to matter. He’d fought through worse.</p><p>David shouldered his pack, his frown not fading even though they had some kind of plan. “I’d feel a lot better if we had any sort of proof that they were down here to begin with.”</p><p>“We can’t stay here indefinitely, so since we’ve got to find ourselves a way out, we may as well look for them at the same time.” Tommy considered the flare gun in his pack for a moment, but the overhanging rocks were a problem. One misfire could bring a whole lot of rubble down on their heads. And that was assuming there weren’t any other weapon emplacements around ready to shoot down anything that moved. He dug the gun out and shoved it into his thigh pocket anyway, just in case.</p><p>It was fine, they’d be fine. They had options. They’d already missed the next check-in, so everyone was going to be looking for them. Once they got into the clear, they could set off a flare far enough away from the laser turret that it wouldn’t draw fire. And he wasn’t alone.</p><p>David being out here was still scary as hell, but it was getting harder to ignore the uncomfortable realization. Tommy had probably been worrying about entirely the wrong person on this trip.</p><p>He’d flung himself down a cliffside after Tommy without hesitation, which could mean either that he cared a lot more about Tommy than Tommy wanted to think about, or he hadn’t outgrown his reckless streak.</p><p>Tommy shouldn’t be surprised at that. Thinking back, there’d been moments all along where David hadn’t just been pulled along in Tommy and Billy’s wake. Tommy’s usual style was ‘in your face,’ loud and obnoxious, impossible to ignore. David was serious most of the time. Not <em>quiet</em>, but reserved. But now Tommy knew a little more about what he was like when he cut loose.</p><p>Only, did he? How much was David still holding back, even when things were good? There had been moments… but there was still all this <em>air</em> between them, too much room for misunderstandings. And Tommy was totally out of practice at bridging that space.</p><p>He wanted to see David like this more often, the version of him who would run on impulse and live in the moment. Not in the same circumstances, <em>obviously</em>; life-or-death got old. But there were other ways.</p><p>“When we get back,” Tommy said, in a segue that made perfect sense to him, “we should do a day trip. Book a bike out of the motor pool and go for a ride. You, me, the open road—see how much non-ocean, non-canyon scenery we can get in on a full tank of gas.”</p><p>David’s head tilted to the side and he stared at Tommy, that quizzical frown-line popping up between his eyebrows again. “Where did that come from?”</p><p>Too much air. With Billy or Teddy, all he’d have had to do would be push over the smell of sun-baked tarmac and exhaust, the feeling of wind on his face and the motor vibrating between his thighs, the rush that came with pushing the bike as fast as it could go—speed limits be damned. Add on David’s arms around his waist and his chest pressed against Tommy’s back, and the whole image was just about perfect.</p><p>He didn’t know how to say things like that anymore. Maybe he never had.</p><p>“Nowhere. Don’t worry about it.” Tommy turned on his heel and started jogging, distracting himself with a catalogue of the various new aches and pains he’d picked up from the plummet—and the thankfully less-than-sudden stop. <em>Head, shoulder, hip’s gonna bruise like a mofo. That must be where I landed on my phone. I bet PPDC insurance doesn’t cover damage to personal property during the course of unauthorized target practice.</em></p><p>Still, those bruises would heal. And eventually, so would the less tangible ones.</p><p>The first of the shadows proved to be just that, slightly cooler air underneath but not much more. The second one was more interesting, a cleft in the rock wall opening up into a low-ceilinged cave. “If I was running away from death-laser murder-bots, this would be the kind of place I’d try,” Tommy said, ducking his head and heading inside.</p><p>“Let’s hope they were thinking the same way.”</p><p>The temperature change was palpable, even though the day outside hadn’t been all that warm. There was a dampness to the air that tried to sink into Tommy’s bones almost immediately, despite the layers of clothes.</p><p>“Hold up.” David put his hand up and Tommy froze.</p><p>A moment, then a second one. Nothing.</p><p>“What am I supposed to be holding?” he asked, and David made a pinching gesture in the air. Tommy shut up again, and then he heard it too. A soft sound, like a scuff or a step taken quietly.</p><p>David spoke again, his voice low. “There’s someone else down here.”</p><p>Tommy weighed their options. Ross’s goons? Unlikely. They’d set up some kind of automated laser thing on top of the ridge, why would he have muscle wandering around in a cave system as well? Wild animals? More likely. Were there bears in California? That was a question he’d never really thought about before. Mind you, if it was a bear, it really should be hibernating right about now. No goons, no bears, really there was only one option left.</p><p>Fairly confident in his reasoning, Tommy cupped his hands around his mouth. “Oliver! Scott! Hart! Come out here!”</p><p>“Tommy! Jesus!” David yelped, smacking his shoulder.</p><p>“Yes to the first, hard no to the second.” Trini emerged from the depths of the cave, dropping the large rock she had clenched in her fist. Her braids had started to come unravelled, her uniform ripped at the knees and covered in dirt like Tommy’s, but there wasn’t any blood. Not that he could see, anyway. </p><p>“Search and rescue’s arrived,” David started moving the same time Tommy did, already reaching into his pack for the first-aid kit. “Are you guys okay?”</p><p> “We’re all here, but Jason’s hurt.” Trini shook her head, and her whole compact frame radiated tension and anger. “We were shot down, sir. This wasn’t an accident. The pilot and the guard—they knew it was going to happen and they bailed the fuck out before we got hit. Someone’s out for our blood.”</p><p>“We know.” Tommy nodded, confirming what she was saying, validating her the only way he knew how. It probably wasn’t reassuring, but at least she wouldn’t have to worry about being believed. “Where’s everyone else? It’ll be easier to fill you all in at once.”</p><p>The cave system got darker as she led them through a tunnel running what felt like parallel to the canyon outside. His phone was dead, and the mini flashlight he had clipped to a carabiner on his pack threw a faint circle of light a few inches ahead of them and no more. “How badly hurt is he?” David asked, his voice reassuring in the gloom.</p><p>“He got clipped by a plasma burst,” Trini replied. “Billy figured it out first, he smelled the ozone. Then when they started firing, Jason pushed him out of the way—him and Kim. But Jason got hit. He’s not going to, like, <em>die</em> or anything, but it looks pretty bad.”</p><p>Light flickered up ahead, a dim glow that didn’t seem much brighter than Tommy’s shitty little emergency light. Trini went on ahead, gesturing for them to follow. They emerged into a smaller cavern than the one Tommy’d started thinking of as the ‘lobby.’ Colder too, and the sound of water dripping somewhere explained the clammy sensation starting to sink into his bones.</p><p>Jason sat against one of the walls, someone’s jacket wrapped around his knee. Kim and Billy were nearby, Cranston talking animatedly while he sketched something out for her on a scrap of paper. He slowed to a stop when Kim stood, face brightening at their arrival. Only… hang on.</p><p>David was heading over to Jason, pulling their medkit out of his bag, so that was one problem taken care of. “Where are Taylor and Oliver?” Tommy asked, counting heads again just in case he’d missed them. Nope. Four cadets in the cave, and he’d definitely sent off six.</p><p>“There’s another tunnel coming off this one,” Kim replied, after trading glances with Trini. She was looking a lot calmer and more collected than Tommy’d expected, considering. “They went to see if there was another exit, and Trini was going to go see if there was anyone following us.”</p><p>“It’s a good thing she did, or we might not have come down this way.” Tommy hesitated, torn. He needed to go find the others. He’d feel a hell of a lot better if he had all six of his kids within line of sight. On the other hand—Jason made a muffled sound of pain and grit his teeth as David cut away the extra fabric from around the burn on his leg. And there was the ever-present possibility of another attack from outside, and they were already down two—three, including Jason. “How’s it looking?”</p><p>“It sucks,” Jason’s reply was curt.</p><p>“I’ve got this,” David said, and he met Tommy’s gaze, steady and sure. “Go.”</p><p>Tommy didn’t question how David understood the unspoken question, he was just grateful for it all over again. “I’ll be back soon. Hang tight.” He took off at a quick jog for the smaller tunnel opening, ducking his head as he slipped inside.</p><p>It was a good thing he wasn’t claustrophobic, though thousands of hours inside a drivesuit would have cured that long ago. This tunnel was tighter, but still big enough that he could walk without hunching over too far. The walls were slick to the touch, like some long-ago river had carved the pathway out of the ancient stone. It seemed stable enough, and a faint breath of fresher air moved against his cheek. If there was wind, there had to be an opening at the other end.</p><p> He heard them before he saw them, Zack Taylor’s nervous energy keeping his mouth running at fifty miles an hour—maybe more. Tommy rounded the corner and spotted them at what first looked like the tunnel’s dead end. It was wider here, but a rockfall had closed off the mouth of the tunnel, sunlight shining through a handful of gaps between the boulders. The pair of cadets were leaning against one of the bigger boulders, and it was… moving?</p><p>“Stop complaining and push!” Tommie said, and then it all made sense. Tommie and Zack put their shoulders against the boulder and gave it another almighty shove. It wobbled and rolled, the rocks above it shifting alarmingly, but even the two of them together weren’t enough to knock it free.</p><p>“Looks like you could use a hand.” Tommy moved into their line of sight and was immediately glad he hadn’t moved faster, because Zack immediately went into a ready-stance in front of Tommie, fists up, like he was about to throw down with the nearest threat. “Stand down, cadet. The cavalry’s arrived. Only we can’t go out the in-door, because that friendly neighbourhood gunner nest hasn’t run out of ammo yet.”</p><p>“Am I ever glad to see you, sir. What’s the plan?” Tommie let out a breath as Zack relaxed, and Tommy wrestled with the sense of alarm creeping up on him.</p><p>With David back in the main cave, Tommy was left to be the adult in the room. That was a very bad decision, and whoever had made it deserved a swift, sharp kick in the nards.</p><p>“It looks like you guys had a pretty good idea here, so let’s roll with that,” Tommy decided aloud. Any decision was better than sitting around with his thumb up his ass trying to figure out the right next step. The answer to the question ‘what would Carol do?’ would more than likely involve something detonating. An avalanche was a good enough substitute.</p><p>“It’s worth a shot,” Zack shrugged. “But watch your head. When this stuff starts to come down, it’s gonna get messy in here.”</p><p>“If we get it rolling then get out of the way, it’ll do its own thing.” Tommy set his shoulder to the boulder, but he wasn’t strong enough to get it moving more than a wiggle on his own. “As soon as we get it going, get your asses back down that tunnel. Chief Alleyne’s getting Jason patched up now, so they’ll be ready to hit the road as soon as we’ve cleared a path.”</p><p>He sounded more confident than he felt, but that was better than the other way around. <em>We could really use that golem right about now.</em></p><p>“Got it, sir.” Tommie and Zack joined him on either side, and the three of them leaned into the boulder. It wobbled, and pebbles rained down on their heads, pinging off the boulder’s side and crunching underfoot when Tommy shifted his foot forward to get more leverage. The rock was rough against his hands, his body straining against the aches that had set in after his fall, but slowly, much too slowly, the rock began to move.</p><p>It shifted, then began to roll. After that everything happened very quickly, all at once. The boulder broke free of the rock pile, careening away. The rocks braced on top of it tumbled down, crashing around Tommy and the cadets as they made a break for the relative safety of the narrower tunnel. Something cracked off his skull with a bright, sharp shock, dust choked his lungs, and the echoes of crashing rock drowned out any other nearby sound.</p><p>Then there was fresh air. Fresh air, sunlight, and an opening in the wall big enough for a person to step through.</p><p>“You’re bleeding,” Tommie’s voice cut into Tommy’s train of thought, and he lifted his hand to his head, the sting from the pebble strike not fading as it should. Tommy’s fingers came back red, and that was when the pain really set in. It lanced through his head when he touched the cut, whiting out his vision for a second. At least it didn’t feel big; maybe a stitch. Or two. “It’s fine,” he lied, scrubbing his hand off on his thigh. “It’s just a scratch. Head wounds suck like that. I’ll stick something on it when we get back.”</p><p>There was one more thing he had to check, and he held up a hand to get the cadets to stay back as he headed for the opening. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if the hole opened up onto a sheer cliff-face, or a waterfall. He could see rock outside, so at least it wasn’t a sharp drop-off. Tommy braced his hand on the closest boulder that seemed steady, and poked his head out into the sun.</p><p>It wasn’t a path per se, but the ground outside sloped away shallowly enough that even Jason could probably pick his way down, with help. The rocks they’d sent rolling had come to a halt about fifty feet down, and the treeline wasn’t as far away as he’d remembered.</p><p>“Looks good,” he reported, stepping back into the cavern and nodding to the two cadets. The movement hurt, a sharp reminder to hold his head still. He had the flare gun in his thigh pocket from earlier, and he pulled it out and loaded it from the internal bandolier. A shot with that thing and Col. Rhodes would know where to find them, radios or no radios.</p><p>The whirring sound from outside was a surprise.</p><p>So were the plasma bolts that fired at him from the armed drone that zipped into view.</p><p>“Not clear!” Tommy dove to the ground, rolled, and squeezed the trigger of the flare gun purely on instinct and muscle memory. The flare’s trajectory was perfect, if he’d been firing a bullet. It collided with the drone dead-on instead of arcing into the sky, the drone exploding with a flash of fire hot enough to curl the hairs on his forearm.</p><p>Pieces rained out of the sky, clattering down the stony hillside.</p><p>He picked himself up, vaguely aware of the bloody handprints he left behind on the rock. “Was that the only one?” Zack asked, moving toward Tommy with Tommie close behind him.</p><p>“Maybe?” Tommy’s ears rang, all the better not to hear them with. A beat passed, then two. He leaned out of the tunnel one more time.</p><p>A pair of drones zipped into view, spinning until they locked on to him.</p><p>“Go, go go!” Tommy yelled, his own voice distant and tinny in his head. The cadets listened to him, thank god, though Tommie didn’t run. She grabbed a rock from the ground and pitched it at one of the drones. Her arm was good but the drone was faster, blasting it into a rain of sand and shattered stone at the apex of its arc.</p><p>“No time for heroics, get out of here!” He grabbed her arm and pulled her along with him, stumbling into the tunnel. Were they going to follow? Tommy headed deeper into the caves, Zack and Tommie close beside. They were sticking to him for some reason instead of getting themselves to safety, and that was bullshit that he was definitely going to chew them out for. Later.</p><p>Once he knew that they were all getting out of this alive.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Chapter 15</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Wherein a rescue takes place, but not before some important things are said. Also, lasers.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Deep enough into the tunnel system that the light could barely find them, Tommy paused and listened for the whir of propellers. The only sounds he could pick up were the echoes of their breathing, and the scuff of someone’s shoe against the rock. No drones, no shots, no sirens.</p><p>“They’re not following?” Tommie asked quietly.</p><p>Zack answered before Tommy could, keeping his voice low to match hers. “Doesn’t sound like it. Maybe they can’t. If they’re being radio-controlled, the controller would lose the signal through the rock.”</p><p>Tommy nodded along with the hypothesis. “I’m not willing to risk our lives on that bet, but it makes as much sense as anything.” He found his flashlight again and thumbed the switch. Nothing dropped in on them from above when the small circle of light appeared, and he breathed a little easier as he led the way out of the tunnel and into the larger cavern beyond.</p><p>The dim light picked out familiar shapes in the darkness, a second small flashlight beam silhouetting David, in conversation with Jason and Kim. He rose to his feet when Tommy and the cadets stepped out of the tunnel. “We heard something that sounded like an explosion.” David headed toward them.</p><p>“We’re pinned down,” Tommy filled them in on the encounter, leaving out his fairly pessimistic estimations of their chances. After all- “Someone’s going to have spotted the explosion, and Colonel Rhodes knows where we were right before we started getting shot at. Backup will be here soon, and then it’s hot showers and the chow line, just like normal.” He was aiming for ‘reassuring,’ but that probably hadn’t hit the mark. Because it would never be ‘normal’ again; not with some huge secret project manipulating them, targeting the cadets for purposes of their own.</p><p>If Tommy wanted to make sure they were safe, he would have to do a lot more than just bring them home. What was the guarantee that the Project RITA organizers wouldn’t just try something similar again?</p><p>He was going to have to take them down somehow, and for that, he needed evidence. Which meant he was going to need one of those drones, ideally a not-exploded example. With one of those and the wall-gizmo as proof, he might have a chance in hell of facing off against General Ross and surviving with his commission intact.</p><p>He turned to ask Tommie about the drone, and David sucked in a sharp breath. He’d gotten close enough now to see Tommy clearly in the dim light. “You’re hurt,” David accused him, and Tommy made a face.</p><p>“I’m fine. Head wounds always look worse than they are.”</p><p>“Because you’re able to look at your own scalp and determine that? Sure. Get over here and sit down; strategy can wait five minutes. It’s impossible to take you seriously when you look like a victim in a horror movie.”</p><p>His voice was coming out all clipped and tight, and that wasn’t right. David was the calm and steady one—except hadn’t they just had that whole conversation about feeling helpless in the face of danger? And this was the second time in as many hours that Tommy’d needed a first-aid once-over.</p><p>Rather than make things worse, Tommy moved to the other side of the cavern and sat on one of the smaller boulders. His head <em>did</em> hurt, especially when he stopped moving, and when he touched his hair again it felt wetter than before. Still. David wasn’t a medic, and Tommy being an idiot wasn’t David’s problem to fix. Tommy fumbled with the zipper for his pack, shaking his head—slowly and carefully—when David joined him. “I can do it. I’ve got wipes and stuff in my kit as well.”</p><p>David took the pack away from him before he could retrieve the first aid supplies. “Sure, so you can complain later that I didn’t pull my weight after all?”</p><p>Was he joking? Tommy was pretty sure he was joking, but in a tone so deadpan that it could go either way. He watched as David found alcohol wipes and a handful of steri-strips, and braced himself in anticipation of the pain. “You’re really going to hold that over me forever?”</p><p>“Hell yes,” David replied. “Something that dumb deserves to have salt rubbed in every so often. Maybe it’ll keep your ego under control.”</p><p>So that was a ‘yes’ to joking. Awesome. David started to clean away the blood from the site of the cut and Tommy flinched, the alcohol’s sting adding to his current cacophony of aches and pains.</p><p>“You know I didn’t mean it the way it sounded, right? My words come out wrong a lot of the time. A lot of words, and a lot of wrong, way too fast.” Tommy picked up speed, the words coming out on their own again, and all he could do was hope that this time they’d be the right ones. “<em>Inside</em> my brain, the point was to stop you from ending up… here. In exactly this kind of stupid scenario, stuck and maybe hurt, gluing me back together. Because shit like this always happens, and it’d be better all around if you were clear of the blast zone.”</p><p>David gave him a flat look, one which spoke volumes about the kind of idiot Tommy was apparently being. “Or you could trust me to make my own decisions about where I want to be.” He started to apply the steri-strips, his touch deft and sure even as the pain throbbed down into Tommy’s temple.</p><p>“Your track record there kinda sucks, Chief. Clubbing with me and getting yelled at for breaking curfew is one thing. Pinned down in a potentially unstable underground cavern by plasma-shooting death drones is the opposite of okay.” Tommy grimaced as David did something awful to the top of his head that ended with a final steri-strip settled into place.</p><p>“I chose to come along on the rescue op because I need to do something tangible occasionally. Like a mission with a defined win condition. And now look what experience I get to add to my resume the next time I go job-hunting.” He swiped at Tommy’s scalp around the steri-strips with a fresh alcohol pad.</p><p>Tommy bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from yelping at another bright sting. The smells hit him all at once—rubbing alcohol, blood, and surgical glue. It sent him right back to the worst days of his life, and he could almost hear the beeping and pinging of heart monitors drowning out everything else. Even then, David had been at his side.</p><p>“How’s that line going to read? ‘Emergency first-aid for idiots who should know better by now’? You look out for everyone else, all the time,” Tommy said quietly, as though David didn’t already know. “Who does that for you?”</p><p>David faltered at the question. He gave Tommy a rueful smile, the wall between them thinning just that little bit more. Like Tommy’d finally started to piece the puzzle together, even if he wasn’t clear on what the final picture would be. “Who watches the watcher? You know the answer to that. No-one.” And for a moment the professional front slipped, that closed-off mask he’d been wearing all afternoon tilted just enough to let the tired show through.</p><p>Tommy frowned at David, really looked at him for the first time since their unfinished conversation that morning. He had bags under his eyes from lack of sleep, worry lines creasing his forehead, dust coating the uniform that had been such a crisp, clean blue earlier that afternoon. This time Tommy was the one watching, taking in the little details that betrayed just how wrung-out David was underneath the façade.</p><p>“It doesn’t have to be like that,” he said. He reached out—realized partway through the motion that his hand was still streaked with dried blood, grabbed the wet wipe and scrubbed it off, <em>then</em> reached again for David’s hand. David glanced at Tommy’s hand skeptically, but took it anyway.</p><p>“<em>I</em> have your back,” Tommy said earnestly. David didn’t seem terribly impressed by the declaration, and Tommy pushed on with his confession. If they died getting out of there, none of it would matter anyway. “I like you—probably a lot more than you know. I don’t care what we call whatever the hell we’ve been doing, as long as we can keep doing it. And I’ll always have your back,” he promised, not entirely sure David had really heard him the first time.</p><p>It was as close as he could get to putting names on things, and it wouldn’t be enough. The moment spun between them, glass-fine and shimmering, and Tommy was too clumsy. No-one should trust him with anything delicate.</p><p>“Big words from a man getting his head taped back together,” David replied, but there was fondness in his voice instead of censure, and a faint smile curling the corners of his mouth. Rocks poked into Tommy’s back and jabbed him uncomfortably in the buttcheek, but none of that mattered as long as David kept looking at him the way he was looking right now, warm and open, and maybe a little hopeful. Or maybe Tommy was projecting.</p><p>“When we get out of here, we need to finish that conversation,” David said. He chewed his bottom lip and looked like he was thinking something through. Then he gave Tommy that small smile again, this time with a sigh. “I still want to know if we can work something out. Something more than just friends with benefits. Call it a sunk-cost fallacy, but you’re not the only one with a stubborn streak.”</p><p>It was what Tommy’d wanted to hear, so why couldn’t he find a way to say that? He grinned instead, nodding and squeezing David’s hand, tight. “I figured that one out a long time ago. Why d’you think we get along so well?” he replied with a grin.</p><p>David squeezed Tommy’s hand right back, and the mask didn’t close off his face again. “Your cadets are waiting for orders, oh fearless leader,” was all he said before pulling his hand away, the heat-impressions of his fingers lingering even after he’d let go.</p><p>They were. Tommy popped a painkiller and used a little of the water in his canteen to rinse the worst of the blood out of his hair, gingerly towelling dry with his jacket before he headed over to join them.</p><p>“What’s the plan?” Jason rose to his feet, testing his weight on his bandaged knee. He nodded to Tommy and made a half-assed attempt to stand at attention, which Tommy waved off without missing a beat.</p><p>They were all looking to him again, a semi-circle of worried faces, and he’d just implied to David that he had things under control. Time to put his money where his mouth was. “Huddle up and I’ll explain,” he said, and once he started talking the ideas spilled out on their own.</p><p>“That cave exit’s still our best chance of getting out. Between the avalanche and the drone explosion, we’ll have drawn a lot of attention, and that’s where our guys will be heading to look for us. And frankly, there’s very little chance of getting up the canyon when their gunner’s got the higher ground. Even if we were all uninjured.” He nodded a little ruefully at Jason.</p><p>“How’re we going to get rid of those drones?” Kim asked, her arms folded across her chest. “You said there were two more?”</p><p>“At least,” Tommy admitted. “And that’s where a little ingenuity is going to come in.” He dropped his pack in the middle of their circle. He took a second to pop out the card from his very dead phone and dropped the remaining carcass onto his pack. “David, your radio?”</p><p>David tossed it over, and Tommy added it to the pile. “Empty your pockets. Anything with wires, batteries, motherboards that we don’t need for survival if we end up here overnight. Now think back real far to any electronics or physics classes you’ve taken, ‘cause our first step is going to be building an EMP generator strong enough to fry circuits. Cranston, start working out what kind of signal strength we’re going to need to get through whatever shielding those drones are likely to have.”  </p><p>“And the next step?” Tommie asked, from her position at Zack’s side.</p><p>Tommy shook his head. “One worry at a time. And whichever one of you has a multitool with a wire cutter gets exempted from barracks inspection forever.”</p><p>That earned a few muffled snickers, and the tension in the cavern dropped a couple of notches. The scavenging netted them a handful of useful things; maybe not enough for a major installation, but a few power cells and enough conductive material would give their little group a fighting chance.</p><hr/><p>The plan had seemed foolproof. That should have been their first warning.</p><p>Getting everyone out to the mouth of the tunnel, no problem. Even Jason made it on his bad leg, one arm around Kim’s shoulder for support. The sun was low on the horizon by the time they got within line of sight of the gap in the wall of the cave, casting long shadows through the treeline below them.</p><p>The drones zipped into view almost immediately, picking up on what – their body heat? Or movement? There were two of the little bastards this time, discs about a foot across with mechanical arms and top-mounted guns that sprayed blue fire. Zack kicked the emp generator out into the open cave and Cranston fired it, a pulse of energy knocking the drones out of the air. The system melted down—one shot had been all they were ever going to get out of it—and thank god, so did the drones.</p><p>They dropped, smashing on the rocks, and the group emerged into the evening light.</p><p>“Grab one of the chassis. We’re going to need it as evidence,” Tommy ordered and a couple of the cadets scrambled to comply. Tommy’s jacket was wet and clammy-cold against his skin and he hauled it off, then threw a couple of drone parts into it to make them easier to carry. Somewhere out there Ross was going to be gnashing his teeth in frustration, and somewhere else out there half the PPDC and—hopefully—a full complement of search-and-rescue guys would be standing between him and them.</p><p>He barely had a minute to contemplate the best way to go about getting Jason down the steep, rocky incline when there was another whirring sound, this one louder. Why louder?</p><p>Tommy whipped around and- “holy shit, more drones!” Zack yelped and finished shoving drone parts into the pack that David had handed him.</p><p>“Go, go, go!” Tommy yelled and the cadets bolted. Tommie and Kim grabbed Jason and started hauling ass down the hill, rocks sliding from under their feet. Cranston, Zack, and Trini followed close behind and David- David didn’t go anywhere. “Get moving!” Tommy yelled at him, dropping his jacket and slamming another flare into the gun. It wasn’t a plasmacaster, but he could still do some damage. “I’ll buy you guys some time.”</p><p>“Bullshit you will!” David snapped back, grabbing his arm and pulling him along with the others. “Heroic last stands are rookie moves. Get your ass in gear.”</p><p>Tommy paused long enough to crack off one more shot; the drone moved, the bastard, dodging the flare. His shot clipped the edge, sent the drone spinning to explode high in the darkening sky. Fine, that was fine, that was enough to let him scramble down the hillside toward the treeline, his feet slipping as he tried to get purchase on the rock. David skidded along beside him, arms waving as he tried to stay upright, and Tommy grabbed him before he could fall. Balance each other – there was a metaphor in there somewhere but his brain was too full of <em>panicohshitdronegonnashootus</em> to worry about that.</p><p>The drone recovered and screamed after them, firing into the ground.</p><p>The cadets were almost to the treeline, and then they stopped. Zack yanked a handful of pieces of shrapnel out of David’s bag, and hurled them up the hill.</p><p>The drone wheeled, zapping the metal shards out of the air in rapid-fire bursts. Radar reflection; they could use that. “Solar blanket!” David yelled, one step ahead. Tommy’s heart pounded its way out of his ribcage and adrenaline burned through his veins. By the time they made it to the cadets in the treeline, Kim and Trini had the blanket out and unfolded, the metallized coating silver in the waning light as they flung it high.</p><p>Tommie had David’s flare gun and she fired. The flare crashed into the blanket and took it flying, the thin metallic ghost burning up in midair and turning into a shower of light and sparks. The drones—two of them now, in hot pursuit—veered away, firing at the shower of fragments and flame.</p><p>With only a few seconds to spare, Tommy, David, and the cadets dove for the treeline, pushing through the underbrush and vanishing—hopefully—into the night.</p><p>
  <em>As long as those assholes don’t have infrared, we might actually make it.</em>
</p><p>Jason stumbled, catching himself against a tree, and Tommy darted in. He slung the cadet’s arm over his shoulder and took Jason’s weight on himself. Jason was lighter than Tommy’d realized, and they were able to move along quickly. “You got this, kid,” Tommy reassured him quietly, and Jason grimaced in pain.</p><p>Tommy wasn’t feeling so hot himself, frankly, the painkiller only partially dulling the pain in his head. He was half-sure that if he put his hand to the cut again it would come away wet, or at least sticky, but this was the kind of moment designed for denial.</p><p>“You should leave me and go,” Jason muttered.</p><p>“No man left behind,” Tommy reminded him. “We’re not marines, but it’s a damned good philosophy.” It was the one that had sent him careening down into a canyon with no plan for how to get back out, but hey. At least if they were going to get shot now, they’d all go together.</p><p>“No, I’m serious.” Jason stopped moving, stumbling along when Tommy took a couple of extra steps without noticing. “I’m slowing everyone down. You need to get the others to search and rescue’s base camp, and if the drones follow us-”</p><p>“Doesn’t sound like they are to me,” Tommy replied, and signalled a general halt. The group stopped moving, Trini flopping to the ground and breathing heavily. Tommy held his finger to his lips to stop their gums from flapping unnecessarily, and together they listened to the world around them.</p><p>No animal or bird noises, no surprise there. They were hidden from the rising moon under the thick canopy of trees, the ground underneath their feet spongy in places, thin over the rock in others. The smell of pine and old rotting vegetation rose up around Tommy, and he tried not to sneeze.</p><p>No whirring, no sounds of plasma fire. Just the eight of them, and the normal, hushed sounds of humans breathing and moving.</p><p>“Take five, gang,” Tommy said, softer than his usual speaking voice but loud enough to be heard. “We made a racket there, so someone’s going to be paying attention.” If it was search and rescue they’d be a hell of a lot better off staying put. If it was goons from Project RITA, that was a different story. Which one was he willing to bet on?</p><p>The one that let his cadets take a few minutes to recuperate. By all rights they should be dead on their feet or losing their minds with panic, subjected to trauma after trauma today, but when Tommy looked around, he didn’t see fear. He saw Billy Cranston checking in with Zack and Tommie, Trini and Kim passing David’s canteen between them, and Jason-</p><p>Jason sinking down the side of a tree and rubbing his knee gingerly, dropping his eyes when he saw Tommy watching him.</p><p>“Do you need another pain killer?” Tommy asked, dropping into a crouch next to Jason. His knee wasn’t bleeding; the wound had been very effectively cauterized by the plasma burst. But he needed to get back to the base and get medical attention soon, or it wasn’t going to heal right.</p><p>“No. Save them in case someone else needs them.” Jason set his jaw. “This is my fault,” he confessed to Tommy after a beat. “If I’d seen the gun turret before it started to fire, we wouldn’t be in this mess. I could have gotten them back a different way, and I wouldn’t be slowing down the group now.”</p><p>“Bullshit,” Tommy said firmly. There was a familiar look on Jason’s face, all self-recrimination and guilt, but it wasn’t his fault. What could a cadet hope to have done when faced with an enemy intent on breaking him down? “Chief Alleyne and I didn’t see it either, and we’re supposedly experienced. This isn’t on you.”</p><p>“Who, then?” Jason challenged him. The guilt and shame in his eyes were replaced by something more heated, so that was a good start. “I’m the closest thing we’ve got to a leader. You told Tommie and I to keep them safe. And I fucked that up.”</p><p>“No amount of planning or preparation can cover everything, and the dice don’t always fall our way. Sometimes, through no fault of anyone’s, the enemy gets a lucky shot. And when that happens, you can’t let it eat you alive. You have to pick yourself up and keep moving,” Tommy said, a different conversation echoing through his memory. The pang that came with it felt different this time, like a scab falling away somewhere deep inside. The back of his neck prickled and he glanced up, met David’s eyes across the end of the tiny clearing. He wasn’t sure if David had heard him, but he hoped. “The smartest guy I know told me that once. I wish I’d listened better at the time.”</p><p>Jason didn’t know the backstory, couldn’t possibly, and when Tommy looked back at him, a frown had settled in on his face. “What did you do instead?”</p><p>Tommy snorted ruefully. “Sulked, mostly. Let myself get stuck so firmly inside my own head and my own guilt that I came too damn close to disappearing. That’s not going to happen now,” he said firmly, poking Jason in the shoulder. He passed Jason his own canteen, watching until the kid grudgingly took a drink. “You’re a good cadet, and you’ll make one hell of a ranger one day. Take your five, drink some water, and by then we’ll have figured out which way we go to get to base camp.”</p><p>He rose to his feet and left Jason to have a moment to himself, and met David coming in the other direction. David laid a hand on Tommy’s stomach, just a passing touch that was also so intimate that Tommy’s entire nervous system short-circuited in that single moment of contact. David caught and held his gaze and Tommy didn’t look away.</p><p>“You remembered that?” David asked quietly, his head tilted inquisitively and the corner of his mouth pulling up into a smile. That was all it took. That look was the old David; the one before Tommy had shoved him away. The moment knocked the wind out of him, hit him even harder than the way David had looked at him when they were in bed together. So much more of him was on offer now, all open and maybe even vulnerable. Tommy wanted to see that all the time. And now he had another chance.</p><p>“You say important things. Even when I wasn’t in a good space to hear it,” Tommy replied, equally quietly. Palpable tension fizzed in the air, and in Tommy’s veins. “I did listen.”</p><p>David ducked his head, not quite close enough to brush their foreheads together. “Good to know. You’ll have to fill me on in what else you remember, someday. In the meantime, stop stealing my best material.” There was a beat when Tommy was sure he’d fucked up again without meaning to—then David grinned wide and Tommy sagged in relief.</p><p>“Jackass.”</p><p>“Smartest guy you know, remember? Show some respect.”</p><p> Tommy would probably have said something unwise about exactly how and where David could get his respect shown, but something made a snapping noise and he held up his hand for silence. The cadets’ quiet chatter stopped dead, and Tommy heard it again—not a drone’s whine this time, but feet—more than one person’s worth, moving through the underbrush.</p><p> Tommy circled his finger in the air and pointed in the opposite direction and without a word or a complaint, the cadets moved. Zack and Kim hauled Jason to his feet and the three of them hobbled rapidly into the trees, the other three flanking them. Tommy grabbed David’s hand and gave it an impulsive squeeze before taking point, getting in front of the cadets. If there was any danger he was going to hit it first, give them time to course-correct before running over the same cliff.</p><p>They ran through the woods in the gathering dark, stopping once in a while to catch their breath when it seemed safe, but that safety never lasted.</p><p>The noise behind them didn’t stop. It got louder, like someone was gaining on them, and Tommy heard shouting though he couldn’t make out the words. The trees seemed thinner up ahead, maybe a clearing? If they had to stop and make a stand, he’d do better there. What he wouldn’t give for a bō in his hands right now, or even a reasonably sturdy stick—something to make their pursuers regret their life choices. Even if just for a moment.</p><p>He burst through the trees into a clearing full of people, the cadets right behind him. Tommy skidded to a halt, narrowly missing being the cause of an eight-person pile-up. Somewhere in the middle of the <em>oh FUCK</em>, he recognized the uniforms. PPDC blue. And then the faces. Rhodey, Teddy, and Eli—</p><p>And Billy, aimed right for him like a goddamned nuclear missile.</p><p>Tommy didn’t have a chance to move before Billy ran straight into him. His arms slammed around Tommy’s neck and the soggy piece of cloth in his hand slapped wetly against Tommy’s back. Tommy staggered back from the impact then his arms went around Billy purely by instinct, Billy’s face buried in his neck.</p><p>“I thought you were <em>dying </em>somewhere, you asshole! The dogs came back with your jacket—it’s covered in blood. There was blood on the rocks! I felt you get hurt; I know I did. Fucking <em>jerk.</em>”</p><p>
  <em>Safe.</em>
</p><p>The relief that crashed over Tommy seemed to come out of nowhere, disproportionate to his stress; or maybe he’d been a lot more freaked out than he’d let himself realize. Either way, Tommy accepted the hug, even leaned into it for a moment.</p><p>Billy’s shoulders heaved suspiciously and Tommy tightened his hold on his twin for a second more. “I’m fine,” he murmured so only Billy could hear it, hyper-aware of the massive group of people watching them. Tommy ruffled Billy’s hair and spoke a little louder, a grin on his face. “Now we’re even for this summer.”</p><p><em>That </em>got Billy to let go. “You did <em>not </em>just say that. That’s it—you are going <em>down</em>!” He dropped Tommy’s lost jacket. Tommy backed up a step and got some space between them as Billy got in his face again, his meltdown redirected and looking for a fight.</p><p>Too easy.</p><p>Teddy was there in time, grabbing Billy’s arm as he wound up. “No punching in front of the cadets. They’re at an impressionable age.”</p><p>“I’m going to impress his stupid face with my fist!”</p><p>“Save a squadron of our young finest from death drones, and this is the thanks I get? Some hero’s welcome,” Tommy taunted back, secure in Teddy’s bulk separating them.</p><p>“Don’t encourage him,” Teddy said, probably to both twins at once. He slung his arms around them, one on either side, and pulled them both into a three-way hug with Tommy squashed in the middle. “I’m glad you’re not dead, though. Finding <em>another</em> co-pilot would have been a disaster.”</p><p>“Get off, you big dumb oaf,” Tommy said, face mashed into Teddy’s chest. He didn’t fight the hug, relief and the familiarity of the shit-talk driving away the last of the fear.</p><p>Around Teddy’s shoulder, Tommy could see the cadets being hustled off, a paramedic from Search and Rescue already asking Jason questions. David was there talking to Eli, he was fine, and no-one had followed them out of the woods. Tommy peeled himself out of Teddy’s clutches feeling a lot better than he had a few minutes ago. </p><p>“If you’re done?” Rhodey asked, not amused, exactly, but not yelling. “It’s getting cold, dark, and there’s delightful <em>hours</em> of debriefing to look forward to after all this bullshit. Get your butts on the helos. We’re going home.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Chapter 16</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Wherein we have debriefings, emotional moments, and desktop handies. It's the full spectrum.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rhodey hadn’t been kidding about the debriefings. They’d at least been allowed to go to medical first, and Tommy tried to sneak away from the crowd on the way. Sterns’ lab was down the hall, and Tommy owed that guy a solid right hook. But Billy dogged his steps and Tommy couldn’t shake him. “Tommy, stop!”</p><p>The power-walk was sending jolts up his side, aching where he’d slammed into the rock, and he had to slow down anyway—he tried to time it so that it looked like he was letting Billy catch up, and not like he needed a rest. “You haven’t been this far up my butt since I rolled Uncle Pete’s car,” Tommy complained, poking Billy in the chest with two fingers. “Back off already. I only need two minutes with the guy and you don’t want to be complicit. In case he presses charges.”</p><p>“Please. You had the shit kicked out of you today; you need someone to hold him still while you deck him. All for one.” Billy set his jaw and Tommy knew <em>that</em> look. Was it worth the time arguing would take, given that he knew how it was going to turn out?</p><p>“Fine,” Tommy groaned, turning the corner into the long hallway lined with labs and small offices. “Whatever. Just don’t blame me if-”</p><p>“Come on, like you wouldn’t-”</p><p>The door was open. Tommy stopped talking and held his hand up; Billy—wonder of wonders—shut his mouth as well. He crept forward and Tommy held position, waiting for a signal. Billy paused in front of the open door, leaned over to look inside, and then his whole body relaxed. He shrugged at Tommy and jabbed his thumb toward the room. “It’s empty.”</p><p>“Empty?” Tommy followed and looked in, and Billy stepped aside to let him see. The lab was as Tommie had described it, only there were no computers, no files, no experiments bubbling away in multi-coloured beakers… nothing at all to say <em>Mad Scientist Was Here</em>. Or any scientist at all. The space looked like any other non-requisitioned space, with a desk and a chair, and a filing cabinet that was probably just as empty. “That fucker. He must have bailed when he realized we were on to him!”</p><p>The irritation surged up inside him, the frustrated anger and leftover fear from the afternoon given nowhere to go. “How much you want to bet Selvig had to leave unexpectedly as well?” Billy asked grimly.</p><p>“No bet. While we were extracting the cadets, Project RITA was extracting them. Sons of bitches!” Tommy cursed and kicked the desk. His boot dulled most of the impact but he still regretted the impulse, the shock rattling his bones.</p><p>“Like rats abandoning a sinking ship,” Billy said, heading for the file cabinet. He pulled a drawer open and rifled through the hanging folders, all of them empty.</p><p>“More like a tactical retreat. If we don’t do something to shut this fuckery down, they’re only going to regroup and try again.” Tommy headed for the hall, careful not to kick anything else as he went.</p><p>“We can’t find and punch all of the people involved,” Billy said, giving up way too easily.</p><p>Tommy considered his options for a moment and made up his mind. “No, but we’ve got other kinds of leverage. Come on. After the nurses stitch me back together, I’ve got debriefings. And I bet I can push enough buttons so that not even the sticks in the mud at the UN will be willing to let this die.”</p>
<hr/><p>The meeting that followed wasn’t as awful and boring as it could have been, not now that Tommy had an agenda of his own. He told his story to Carol—again—and a handful of strangers staring at him from a bank of monitors on the wall. He started with the cadets’ sleep disruptions and went all the way to the gun turret and drones, and their escape through the woods. But it dragged on, and his interrogators made him keep repeating everything he’d already told them. By the time he’d all but given up on winning over the balding nebbish of a PPDC middle-manager who was asking most of the questions, Tommy had been unable to bite back a yawn that split his face open, and Carol called it a night.</p><p><em>Get sleep, </em>she’d told him as she kicked him out of her office. <em>I’ll keep the wolves at bay while you get some rest. </em>In what universe was that likely? Tommy stopped by his quarters long enough to get out of uniform and shower, gingerly rinsing the last of the dried blood from his hair. Then he found himself pulled toward the rangers’ day room by some inexorable drive not to be alone.</p><p>Now he was flopped across the old broken-down couch, his whole left side aching distantly under the painkiller haze, fingers laced together behind his head so that he wasn’t tempted to scratch at the surgical glue they’d used to stick his scalp back together. Teddy sprawled in the chair opposite him, his bootless feet propped up on the cushion beside Tommy as he listened to the recap. “You should have seen Carol by the end of it. If there was a way to reach through the screen and shake that Coulson guy, she’d have done it. But there’s no way anyone can deny what’s going on now.”</p><p>“Shooting the plane down was a major tactical error. Ross’s team should have known search and rescue would get involved with something like that,” Billy replied, his shoulder pressed snug against Tommy’s and his elbow digging slightly into Tommy’s sore ribs. It wasn’t uncomfortable <em>exactly</em>, and Billy probably needed the reassurance. Tommy didn’t make him move.</p><p>“I don’t think they counted on Colonel Rhodes getting so involved; remember he said the real search-and-rescue team got delayed? I’m pretty sure that was on purpose,” Tommy scowled at the room, quiet-ish now in that late-evening way. “This stinks. Everything about it stinks.”</p><p>“Not me, I showered.” David crossed the room and handed Tommy one of the two cans of soda he carried. He sat on the sagging, overstuffed arm of the couch next to Tommy and Teddy put his feet down, making room. “I ended up telling them about hacking in for the redacted files, for the record; you don’t have to keep covering for me. Thank you, though,” David added, and popped his own can open.</p><p>“Any time. Did you hear anything from your guy at the Pentago-”</p><p>“There he is.” Tommy heard Kate’s voice and glanced over his shoulder to see her and Eli came in, America behind them. “The whole dome is buzzing about what you two pulled off today.”</p><p>“Do that again while we’re stuck on-base and can’t help, and I’ll punch you myself.” Chavez stole the chair out from under Eli and he glared at her before moving to one of the other couches in the circle.</p><p>David chuckled darkly. “Believe me, if we could have scheduled any of this it would have turned out very differently.”</p><p>Tommy drained half the can in a single move as the chatter rose around him, the fizz going up his nose and the taste sickly-sweet. The familiar voices rubbed the rough edges off, soothing his badly-frayed nerves.</p><p>“What happens next?” That was Darcy, <em>not</em> normally part of the dayroom background noise. He opened his eyes and saw her leaning against the wall, arms folded across her midsection.</p><p>Tommy grinned, which turned into a grimace when some of the implications of his choices hit him for the first time. “I think I convinced them that there’s enough proof that they need to call a hearing. Carol suggested bringing in the PPDC brass, the Army, the whole deal. If it happens, some of us are going to have to testify. Me, Kitty and Doug, the cadets—probably even you and David, thanks to the way I dragged you into this. Sorry.”</p><p>“Don’t be,” David said firmly. “I’m not.”</p><p>“Right?” Darcy replied. “What were we supposed to do, sit by and let the bad guys win? Forget that. I can’t speak to everything that happened, but I worked with Selvig for, like, a year. That dude has issues.”</p><p>“Billy and I were there when the tech crew pulled the theta-wave modulator out of the wall,” Teddy added. “If you need any backup there.”</p><p>Kate nodded along. “Those of us who aren’t testifying should be present anyway in full dress uniform. It’ll play well for the politicians on the committee.”</p><p>“What we need to do now is decide on strategy,” Eli said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, attention on Tommy and David alike. “They might take the tech reports better coming from David and Kitty, with Tommy focusing on the after-action report. We can’t control where they take the questions, but-”</p><p>“No!” Tommy objected, sitting up before everyone planned everything around him and he lost any traction in the conversation. “You guys don’t have to be a part of this. There are angry US Army officers out there with fancy weapons, and they really don’t like me right now. I’ve painted a big fat target on my back by going after Ross. There’s no reason for all of you to go down with me.”</p><p>“Just how hard <em>did</em> you hit your head?” Kate asked, incredulous.</p><p>“Seriously,” Teddy scoffed, nudging Tommy’s knee with his foot. “The Army tried to mess with some of us, now they’re going to deal with all of us. That’s how family <em>works</em>.”</p><p>“I can’t ask you guys to put yourselves on the line with me.” His objections were getting weaker, but it was hard to come up with better reasons when he was being stared down by a full circle of his closest friends.</p><p>“Bullshit you can’t,” Billy snorted. “Since when?”</p><p>“I’ll be a character witness if you need one. I’ve got a lot to say,” America added dryly, her sly smile peeking out after Kate elbowed her in the ribs.</p><p>“If that’s my incentive I’m on the next plane out of here,” Tommy fired back, but the teasing felt right, got him better-settled in his skin. “I’d rather find Ross and drag him in person.”</p><p>“Keep that energy focused on where it’ll actually do something useful,” Eli chided them both.</p><p>“So the strategy is ‘going in guns blazing,’ then?” Teddy asked, his own grin knowing.</p><p>Outnumbered and at least theoretically out-gunned, Tommy gave in to the inevitable. He shrugged, returned Teddy’s smile, and sat a little taller. “Fine, whatever, you guys are all morons. But we may as well. They can’t assassinate <em>all</em> of us.” But there was one person whose opinion mattered more than most. “David?” Tommy glanced at him, eyebrow going up. <em>Are you in?</em></p><p>David nodded, with a sharp edge to his grin. “The last time I suggested caution I was wrong. This time, we bury them.”</p>
<hr/><p>Tommy went to bed without having that <em>other </em>debriefing after all.</p><p>He could have pushed it, demanded that David hang around after the impromptu team huddle had broken up, but he was running on fumes by the end. Stumbling back to his room and taking his boots off before he passed out was all he’d been able to handle. That, and he was dreading the moment of truth even more than the idea of Chavez roasting him in front of a tribunal.</p><p>He was pretty sure she’d been kidding.</p><p>David hadn’t been. And panic tangled him up at the thought. It would be easier to take off, grab a bike and go, come back in a couple of days when everything had blown over and David had forgotten why he’d ever thought he wanted Tommy to begin with.</p><p>But what would that get him in the end? Back to the status quo. Looking in from the outside, wanting something he wasn’t supposed to want, the restlessness and the boredom brain-fog clawing at him every time he stopped moving.</p><p>The other option was to admit to himself that he was scared—scared of everything that he’d never be able to put back into the bottle once it was out. The psych department would have a field day with the whole thing: Tom Maximoff, professional adrenaline-junkie, willing to risk life and limb daily for complete strangers, totally unable to get past the terror of saying something personal to his not-boyfriend.</p><p>If he didn’t, he’d lose out; David wasn’t going to be satisfied with the status-quo for long. He deserved better, he’d outright said that he wanted more, and for some dumb reason he thought Tommy was capable of rising to the occasion.</p><p>Was he? Teddy’d broken through his barricades eventually, but there wasn’t going to be any extra help coming from Billy and a neural bridge this time.</p><p>Tommy was going to have to make this precarious reach across the divide all on his own.</p><p>And that was why Tommy was back at the scene of the crime the next morning, sitting on David’s desk, in David’s quarters, desperately trying to explain why the word ‘relationship’ made his throat close down. David sat in his office chair, not nearly as calm as he was pretending to be, waiting for Tommy to say something. Tommy blew out a puff of air and tried to ignore the furrows in David’s forehead, the signs of stress he’d put there. “It’s just easier not to put a label on things. It means no-one expects too much.”</p><p>“Don’t you think we’re past that point?” David’s shoulders lifted and sagged in a silent sigh. “Fine, whatever, I’ll bite. No labels. What does that even look like when it’s not a one-night stand?”</p><p>“Like, big picture? No idea. I never end up anywhere—with anyone—long enough to figure it out.” That was cutting too close to things Tommy didn’t like thinking about, his fingertips drumming on the edge of the desk to get rid of his nervous energy.</p><p>David had shut down, his face unreadable, probably thinking the same thing as everyone else: Tommy was flighty, got bored too easily, would ditch him after a few weeks and move on. There was no good way to explain why it wouldn’t be like that this time, and no label would ever make David believe him. Especially because it might not matter what <em>Tommy</em> wanted.</p><p>He couldn’t control what David did, after all. And Tommy… Tommy wasn’t usually the one who did the leaving.</p><p>One day, David would come to his senses. And while Tommy was bleeding out, he would have to keep on pretending that he didn’t care.</p><p>“This is dumb-” Tommy started to say, pushing off the desk to land on his feet. What was the point? He couldn’t explain it even if he tried.</p><p>David didn’t let him get anywhere, shoving his chair sideways to cut off Tommy’s escape. “Sit,” he said firmly. “We’re talking this out.”</p><p>Tommy stopped in surprise; surprise and a weird burst of gratitude, like his subconscious was thankful that David was getting in the way. <em>Or for stopping me from getting in my own way?</em></p><p>“That’s unfair. You don’t get to use the Voice on me in non-sex, non-Jaeger scenarios.”</p><p>“It’s my voice, I’ll use it how I want.”</p><p>“Cheater.”</p><p>“I never promised to play fair. Come on,” David coaxed instead of ordering, and that was even harder to refuse. “Talk to me. I know what I’m getting out of ‘us.’ But what is it that <em>you</em> want? Other than making out, because we’re doing okay on that front.”</p><p>Tommy sagged against the edge of the desk. This was it, his turning point. Either he broke now, dared to pry open his chest and let David peek inside… or they started down the road where he’d lose everything. He couldn’t help his knee bouncing, and he rubbed his hands across his face before replying.</p><p>“You really want to know? Want to take that freaky Freudian trip with me? I want,” he tried to say, but the words got stuck in the tar pit of his throat and he choked. “You’ll laugh.”</p><p>David caught Tommy’s hands between his own, held them and warmed them up between his palms. It had the side effect of making sure Tommy couldn’t bolt, which probably wasn’t accidental. “Not at this. Not at you.”</p><p>The gesture was so simple, David’s hands so warm, that for a moment—Tommy closed his eyes, easier to say this kind of thing without making eye contact. Easier to say this stuff if he didn’t have to see David look at him with pity. “I know people joke about it. About me. ‘Commitment issues,’ ‘tabloid player,’ ‘party boy’—I’ve heard every polite and not-so-polite way there is of saying ‘Tom’s a ho.’ It’s not true. I mean, yeah, I’ve had my share of partners, some more serious than others. But that part’s always only from my end.</p><p>“No matter how much I want someone to stick around, they never do. People always leave. And I’m not enough to make them want to stay. I’m never enough to be worth it.” His voice caught. <em>May as well lean into the humiliation, because it only gets worse from here.</em></p><p>“So eventually, you get to asking—what’s the point? Why bother trying to make something more than what it is, if it always ends the same?”</p><p>He dragged in a breath, stared at David’s hands around his, and got the air down to his lungs through sheer force of will. Usually he had a hard time <em>stopping</em> words from coming; now getting each one out took effort.</p><p>“I want you to want to stay,” he said, quiet and a little broken, maybe the most honest thing he’d ever said in his life. Bands of iron closed around his chest but David squeezed his hands, politely ignoring the wetness that Tommy could feel on his face. “I want to be your first choice. Not a…a pity fuck, or a way to kill time, or a stopover on the way to something better. And I don’t know <em>how</em> to look any further ahead than that.”<em> Maybe, maybe, maybe-</em></p><p>“There’s nothing funny about that.” Tommy opened his eyes and David hadn’t moved, sitting there in front of him, warming Tommy’s hands like this was a totally normal way to spend a morning. “That’s really powerful. And sad,” he amended after a beat.</p><p>“Thank you,” Tommy replied dryly. “Here I am, admitting some form of honest <em>sentiment</em> for what might be the fourth or fifth time in my life, and all I get is ‘sad’?”</p><p>David pressed Tommy’s fingers to his lips. “That’s even sadder.” But his smile twitched upward, his mouth was even warmer than his hands, he wasn’t going all soggy over Tommy’s confession, and Tommy started to relax.</p><p>“We’ve known each other a long time, right?” David waited until Tommy’s uncertain nod. “Then you should trust me more. I promised once that I’d always be here. I still mean it.”</p><p>He played with Tommy’s fingers, turning Tommy’s hand over and laying his own against it, palm to palm, fingertip to fingertip. It felt right, soothing, the gentle pressure of his hand an anchor keeping Tommy from floating away. David met Tommy’s eyes again, and that look knocked the panic right out of him.</p><p>“You’ve been my first choice for a long time,” David said, and Tommy believed him. “For years before I knew that you were an option I would ever get to have.”</p><p>Relief hit Tommy like a blow to the gut; relief and a handful of other things he couldn’t begin to name, but all of them were good. He worked free from David’s grip and swiped at his own face, erasing the dampness on his cheeks with the back of his hand. Evidence of his weakness gone and the world finally, <em>finally </em>stabilizing underneath him, Tommy grinned. “Just couldn’t resist that Maximoff swag, could you?”</p><p>David did laugh then, but that was okay. “Believe me, I tried.” Joking aside, David hadn’t taken his eyes off Tommy through the whole conversation, almost like he was afraid Tommy would disappear if he looked away. Fair. And Tommy wasn’t helping matters by being an annoying little shit. But if David wanted someone who would be sugar-hearts and flowers all the time, he had a lot of better options.</p><p>“You know I don’t do sappy,” Tommy warned him, feeling like a jackass even as he said it.</p><p>“And I can’t be your telepathic soulmate,” David said, tipping his chair back and lifting his chin, that familiar, stubborn I-know-better-than-you look coming into his eyes. “There won’t be any easy shortcuts. We’ll have to actually, y’know, <em>talk</em> about things sometimes.”</p><p>“What, like regular people?” Tommy cracked, shying away from the callout. “Why not, what the hell. But I’m warning you now, I’m awful at that shit.”</p><p>David grimaced. “The only time saying that doesn’t make you an asshole?” He poked Tommy’s knee with his finger. “Is if it’s followed by ‘and here’s how I’m going to work on fixing that.’”</p><p>“… Okay.”</p><p>“Okay?” David blinked at him.</p><p>“Okay, I’ll work on fixing that,” Tommy promised, buoyed by a wave of elation. “I’m <em>going</em> to fix it. Because I want you to be happy, and I want us to be a thing. Dating, exclusive, long-term, out. As out as you’re comfortable being. I’m not putting out a press release,” he amended, just in case. Tommy was feeling too damn good right now, the world filled with light and possibility. Everyone else and their hot takes could go fuck themselves.</p><p>“Hold up. Exclusive, long-term, <em>and</em> happy? I don’t know, Tommy... that sounds like it might be bordering on <em>sappy</em>,” David mocked. But his dark eyes were alight and alive, he had a teasing smile on his lips, and he shifted forward in his chair until his elbows were on his knees and he was leaning into Tommy’s space again.</p><p>“If you’d rather I regress to making stupid jokes, jumping to conclusions, and keeping you guessing-” Tommy shrugged. “But this is me, making an effort. It’s about as good as it’s going to get right now.”</p><p>“No, believe me, I appreciate it.” David stood and cupped Tommy’s face in his hands. Tommy leaned into the touch, tipped his face up into the kiss. There was no urgency to it this time. David kissed him slowly, deeply, tasting the corners of his mouth, their tongues slipping against one another in something that felt like a promise<em>.</em> It settled all the terror inside, the urge to <em>run </em>fading into nothing.</p><p>He belonged here.</p><p>David broke the kiss, Tommy following him until he almost overbalanced and toppled off the desk, saving himself with a quick grab for the chair. His left side stabbed him at the sudden movement, but distracted by David’s laugh, he happily ignored it. When David spoke again, his voice was soft, affectionate, and a little bit resigned. “Either you’re going to be the best thing that’s ever happened to me, or this is going to end in nuclear winter.”</p><p>Tommy curled his hand around David’s wrist, fingertips settling against his pulse point and keeping him close. “I’m willing to risk it if you are.”</p><p>“Yeah, I am. And yes, I accept your offer.”</p><p>“My what?”</p><p>“Openly dating, monogamous, hopefully long-term—if we don’t murder each other before we’re old,” David ticked off the list on his fingers, still so close inside Tommy’s personal bubble. It felt good with him, the way it didn’t with almost everybody else. Like David belonged there too.</p><p>Reaching out, Tommy tugged David closer to him, craving his touch like nothing else. He wrapped an arm around David’s neck, pulling him down. Their lips locked a second time and Tommy slung a leg over David’s hip to keep him there as well, secure between Tommy’s thighs.</p><p>Now it was urgent, now the need to be next to him, with him, under him, was bubbling in Tommy’s veins. It could have been relief, or an aftereffect of confessing, his vulnerability transformed into desire and a desperate need to affirm everything they’d just said. He didn’t care. “Do you need to be anywhere?” Tommy asked, the feel of David’s hands slipping up his back under the hem of his t-shirt already suggesting the answer.</p><p>David shook his head. “Not this morning. Not after yesterday.”</p><p>“If this is what it takes to get you a vacation day-” Tommy joked, hauling his shirt off as he did. “Lock the door, because I don’t want to get interrupted.”</p><p>“It locks automatically,” David replied, then hissed a curse through his teeth. He ran his fingertips along the edge of the vivid blue and purple bruises that covered Tommy’s left side, the blotches occasionally interrupted by an old burn or scar. “Is that all from yesterday?”</p><p>That wasn’t the kind of attention Tommy was hoping for, and he tugged David’s shirt up as a distraction. “It’s not as bad as it seems. I bruise easy.” He moved too fast and winced at the flash of pain; not as subtle as he’d hoped.</p><p>“You fell off a cliff, I’d be a lot more concerned if you weren’t bruised at all. But how did you not break anything?”</p><p>“Technically-”</p><p>“Tommy.”</p><p>“It’s a partial hairline fracture to one rib.” Tommy dismissed David’s concerns with a breezy wave. “All I have to do is take it easy for a couple of weeks and it’ll be fine.”</p><p>“A couple of weeks.”</p><p>It wasn’t a question <em>exactly, </em>but David was staring him down again and Tommy shrugged and gave in. “Fine. Six weeks. But I still need to do regular cardio to prevent further complications. So really, by accelerating my heart rate, you’re doing me a major favour.” He pressed his lips to David’s chest, tracing a line of firm kisses along David’s shoulder. David’s hips stayed tight against his, and Tommy gave in to the urge to push against him, lean into the contact and the growing ache in his groin.</p><p>“I need you,” Tommy mumbled indistinctly against David’s skin, and David’s hands tightened on his hips. Tommy turned his face and nuzzled into David’s neck. “I need this. Something tangible. With a defined win condition,” he added with an insolent grin, biting David’s shoulder.</p><p>That pulled a surprised laugh out of David, his hesitation vanishing and his mouth covering Tommy’s. David ran his hands over Tommy, teasing his nipples, skimming over the muscle in his arms, and carefully avoiding his left side. There was need in his touch, in that kiss that matched Tommy’s own and the warm ache in the pit of his stomach flared into a bonfire. He could have this, have David in his arms and on his body, learn every inch of his skin and not have to forget it all in a week, or a month—David had said ‘long term.’ And he kept his promises.</p><p>Tommy licked a long stripe up David’s throat, everything about his smell and taste so fresh and bright. David was a revelation, a gift he’d never get tired of unwrapping. He slid one hand down David’s chest, past his belt, wrapped his hand around David’s hardening cock, and so he wouldn’t overbalance, threw his other arm over David’s shoulder to take his weight.</p><p>David flinched. Startled, Tommy let go. David winced and rolled his head to the side, stretching out his neck and holding it for a beat. A suspicion flared to life and Tommy glared at him. “You’re hurt.”</p><p>David shrugged it off. “I wrenched something yesterday, probably while we were sliding down the mountain. I’ll be fine.”</p><p>“Hypocrite!” Tommy announced, and David had the gall to look <em>sheepish</em>. “Giving me shit for my rib while you’re probably supposed to be on <em>bedrest</em> or something.”</p><p>“It’s a pulled muscle, not a brain embolism. They sent me away with an ice pack and a handful of ibuprofen.” He braced his hands on the desk on either side of Tommy’s thighs and leaned in, nipping at Tommy’s lower lip. “Now do you want to make out or not?”</p><p>There was only one possible answer to that question, even when they were both bruised up and tender. “Always.” Tommy ran his hands over David’s shoulders much more gently this time, tightened his leg around David’s hips to pull him in closer and kiss him again.</p><p>He couldn’t articulate why even a small injury on David was so much more important than a bruise Tommy would forget before the final yellow-green traces had faded. He was precious, important, and so, so special—the warmth Tommy refused to name spread through him again, his heart thumping so hard against his sore ribs that he would almost swear he could feel extra pressure against the break.</p><p>They broke apart after a couple of minutes, foreheads pressed together and David’s hard cock riding against his, sensation muted to a desperately light tease by the layers of clothing between them. “You said you knew what you were getting out of this,” Tommy said, cupping David’s jaw between his palms. David hadn’t shaved that morning, his stubble prickly and rough against Tommy’s skin. “What is it?”</p><p>“Medical leave,” David replied, whip-fast and laughing as he said it.</p><p>“You’re not as funny as you think you are.”</p><p>“I absolutely am, you just need better taste.” But he kissed Tommy again, kissed him and then took him seriously. “You. I just want you. All your smart-ass comebacks and your emotional constipation included. It’s so easy to get caught up in my work, and you pull me out of the cave. Kicking and screaming, sometimes,” he added with a grin, “but it’s always been worth it. You burn through here like a wildfire and make everything brighter.”</p><p>Tommy wasn’t sure what answer he’d been hoping for, but the one he got was so much better than anything he could have imagined. He struggled to unbuckle David’s belt and get his hands on him properly, diving beneath layers of denim and soft cotton knit. He closed his hand tight around David’s cock, skin like hot silk against his fingers. David gasped into Tommy’s mouth and Tommy’s tongue darted between his lips to steal the sound away.</p><p>He was hard now, hot and thick in Tommy’s hand, and his whole body shuddered at Tommy’s first long, languid stroke. David worked open the button on Tommy’s jeans, but Tommy’s ribs complained loudly when he tried to lift his hips to let David tug his clothing down. He stayed where he was instead, impatiently shoving down the elastic of his boxer briefs.</p><p>They didn’t make it off the desk, David fumbling with a small bottle of lube from his desk drawer before slicking up his hand and closing it tight around Tommy’s erection. It felt too good, so fucking <em>intense</em> that nothing else mattered, at least until Tommy’s hips jerked up. The pain jabbed him in the ribs again, sharp enough to cut through the desire-filled fog wrapping around his spine. “Ow, shit!” Tommy gasped, groaning a moment later when David slowed down.</p><p>“You okay?” David stopped to ask and that was even worse, Tommy’s hips stuttering to push against David’s hand.</p><p>“Yes! … yes. I’m good. Just moved wrong. Don’t you dare stop.”</p><p>“Not a chance. But you need to keep still if you don’t want to make your ribs worse.” David was enjoying <em>that</em>, and he bit at Tommy’s lip again in punctuation.</p><p>Being gentle and slow was the next thing to torture, Tommy desperate to chase the sensation only to get painful reminders every time he tried to move too quickly, or even engage his core. His legs wrapped around David’s thighs, David’s mouth covered his and the heat built torturously slowly in the sliver of space between their bodies.</p><p>Tommy stroked David’s cock, caressed him, slid the pad of his thumb through the wetness gathering at the tip and laughed with the purest joy at the keening sound that burst from somewhere deep in David’s throat. <em>Lover, be my lover, forget how anyone else ever made you feel. </em>Later he was going to suck David’s cock, get his mouth on him, spend an hour of their afternoon teasing every possible sensation out of him, just like David was doing with his hands now-</p><p>David met Tommy’s rhythm, his broad hand tight, slick, and hot around Tommy’s cock, moving slow enough to torment and keep them both riding on that perfect edge.</p><p>Tommy needed him, needed to come desperately, needed this to never end. David tightened his hand and moved faster and Tommy followed his lead, hanging on to control by the barest sliver of his fingernails. He could hold on, hold out for more, make this last as long as possible—only he made the mistake of opening his eyes. He looked down, resting his forehead against David’s perfect mouth, air forcing itself out of his lungs in a gasp.</p><p><em>Holy shit</em>. The visual was everything: two hands, moving over two cocks flushed dark and darker, both shining-slick with a messy combination of lube and pre-come. Tommy’s vantage point put David’s abs the background for the display, intimate, erotic, and perfectly obscene.</p><p>The impulse to mess him up came hard and fast—and so did Tommy. Waves of exhilaration broke through him at the sight of his come splashing white over David’s hand and his stomach, the rush starting at the top of his head and in his fingertips and screaming through his body like lightning. He lanced his tongue into David’s mouth, twisted his wrist and jerked David with rapid, needy strokes, riding his own pleasure as wave after wave left him trembling and spent.</p><p>David followed him over that ledge minutes later, nails on his free hand digging into Tommy’s thigh. He came in Tommy’s hand like Tommy had just come in his, a circle that Tommy couldn’t bring himself to break.</p><p>He did loosen his grip a little, a concession to sensitivity, and stroked David lightly up and down his shaft. Tommy struggled to catch his breath and steady the rabbit-fast beating of his heart.</p><p>David was a dishevelled mess when Tommy was able to focus again, his full lips swollen and a faint sheen of sweat along his collarbone. And he was so beautiful that Tommy could barely stand it. “So if I’d come out to you the day you came out to me…” Tommy asked, his voice rough in his own ears.</p><p>David nuzzled his neck, scraped his teeth along the tender spot where Tommy’s throat joined his shoulder. “We could have been doing this for years already.”</p><p>“Goddammit,” Tommy groaned, his head lolling back as David pulled the final thrills of sensation through him.</p><p>David ran the pad of his thumb along Tommy’s lower lip, pausing long enough for Tommy to nip at it with his teeth. “It’s fine. I’ve been putting together a fairly long list of ways you can make it up to me.”</p><p>Of course he was. Tommy curled his tongue around David’s thumb, sucked and bit at it again until David let his hand fall to rest on Tommy’s half-clothed thigh. “Is ‘hand jobs on your desk’ on that list?” Tommy asked, all kinds of other delicious desk-related options presenting themselves in his mind’s eye. Some weren’t super-feasible until they’d both healed up some more, but that was fine. Tommy could wait.</p><p>“Oh, it’s definitely on there, especially now.” David chuckled, the sound sending Tommy’s pulse into the stratosphere again. “The real question you should be asking is how many times.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Chapter 17</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The day of the tribunal dawns, and Tommy's in the hot seat.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This was originally supposed to be the last chapter before the epilogue but it just kept growing. So I've cut it in half and now there are 18 chapters + an epilogue. Not sorry. </p>
<p>All of the laws and legal cases cited are real, but I'm 100% not a lawyer nor even law-adjacent, so the way I used them is totally made up for drama points.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You loop it up and around and then- shit. Not that way.” The loop de-looped itself in Billy’s hands as he pulled the wide end through the wrong way.</p>
<p>Tommy scowled at Billy, currently wearing the dark-eyed mirror-image of his own irritated expression as he tried to tie Tommy’s tie for him again. This time Billy got the thing through the loop properly but the short end hung way further down Tommy’s chest than the wide end, even before he tightened anything. “I thought you said you knew how to do this,” Tommy snapped finally, yanking the tie from around his neck. Half an hour to go before he was set to testify against Ross, and the nervous energy was starting to build up inside. For a hot second he debated whipping the tie at Billy, but dealing with the tribunal was going to be complicated enough without giving his twin rope-burns as well.</p>
<p>“It’s not like I wear dress uniforms any more often than you,” Billy griped, grabbing his own tie off the back of the chair and staring at himself in the mirror as he tried to figure it out. “Loop, and then up through the loop—or is it around first, and then through? See, this is the kind of thing dads are supposed to be for.”</p>
<p>“Too bad we don’t even have one to share between the three of us,” a third voice replied, and Billy choked.  </p>
<p>Tommy snickered, glancing behind him to see Teddy emerging from the tiny bathroom, buttoning his dress shirt over his undershirt. “That should be a business model. I’m sure someone’s done instructionals for this shit. ‘How to tie a four-in-hand tie.’ Right up there with oil changes and bad jokes.”</p>
<p>“For what it’s worth, I learned tie-tying from my mom.” Teddy finished with his buttons and slid Billy’s tie from around his neck. “Here. It’s supposed to have <em>two </em>loops around before you thread it through.”</p>
<p>The door buzzed and Tommy pushed the button to unlock it without remembering that the room wasn’t technically his anymore. Whatever; everyone had pants on.</p>
<p>“You guys aren’t ready to go yet?” David paused in the door, lips twitching like he was trying not to laugh as he took in the scene. “How long can it possibly take to tie your ties and get your shoes on?” It wasn’t the first time Tommy’d seen him in his impeccable dress blues, but it <em>was</em> the first time he might have the chance to peel David out of them later. He took a moment to admire the view.</p>
<p>“You’d think it wouldn’t be difficult. Just remember that of the four of us, you’re the only one who actually wears one of the dumb things on a regular basis.” Teddy greeted David with a nod and a grin as he started tugging the knot up toward Billy’s chin. The long end was shorter than the short end again, and he frowned. “Hunh.”</p>
<p>Billy groaned and turned to the mirror. “Let me try it again.”</p>
<p>“It’s like the blind leading the blind around here,” Tommy grumbled, pulling his eyes away from David’s shoulders. “Think I can get away with wearing the sweater instead?”</p>
<p>David took the annoying strip of silky blue fabric out of his hand and shook his head. “Not today, you can’t. Hold still.”</p>
<p>Tommy tried, he really did, and David’s presence helped. Just having him in the room was enough to calm some of the butterflies taking up residence in Tommy’s stomach. Tommy lifted his chin as David did something interesting with loops in the general vicinity of his collarbone, their reflections obscured in the mirror by Billy and Teddy. “There.” David slid the knot just-so against Tommy’s throat, his fingertips brushing against Tommy’s skin. Tommy turned his cheek into the touch, just long enough to make contact and drag in a settling breath. Everything was going to be fine.</p>
<p>“When this is all over, we are going <em>out</em>,” Tommy declared firmly. “I’m gonna put gold glitter everywhere, and we’ll hit every club that’ll let us in.”</p>
<p>“Glitter counts as a war crime,” David informed him faux-seriously. “You’re going to be leaving trails behind you for weeks.”</p>
<p>“Who said it was just going on me?” Tommy leered, and David rolled his eyes fondly.</p>
<p>“Is that a Windsor knot? Very sharp,” Teddy commented, grinning as he managed to get Billy’s tie to line up properly.</p>
<p>“If you’re going to do something, do it right.” David smoothed Tommy’s tie and handed him the blue jacket hanging off the chair. He paused for a second and glanced at the plastic name tag on the front. Unhelpfully, it just said <em>MAXIMOFF</em>.</p>
<p>“That one’s definitely mine. It’s got more service ribbons than Billy’s because he’s a slacker,” Tommy replied to the unasked question, and yanked his foot out of the way before Billy could ‘accidentally’ stomp on it. He hauled his jacket on over the crisp shirt and neatly pressed trousers, buttoned it and locked the belt in place.</p>
<p>The person looking back at him in the mirror didn’t feel like him, all spit-shined and tailored, his hair slicked back and behaving for once and the brass buttons and insignia gleaming against the blue wool. He looked older than the last time he’d worn this get-up, for the press release photo just after Teddy’d been assigned to Magnus for real. How had that been less than eighteen months ago? Too much had happened since then to believe it. Too much had changed, both on the outside and on his insides.</p>
<p>This Tom Maximoff wasn’t the same guy who’d had to be threatened out of the infirmary to do the formal media scrum with his new co-pilot, only to fling the ill-fitting dress uniform over the sickroom chair the moment he’d been able to struggle out of it. His bleached-white hair was the same, his angular jaw, his green eyes—but somewhere underneath all of that, something more intangible had shifted. Or maybe… it had <em>settled</em>. The uniform fit him better now, anyway. That could be all that he was seeing.</p>
<p>David stepped up behind him in the mirror, swept his hands across the epaulettes on Tommy’s shoulders and down his sleeves, giving the cuffs a sharp, quick tug to set them into place. “Looking good, slugger,” he said quietly, meeting Tommy’s eyes in the glass. “Ready to go?”</p>
<p> “Depends.” Tommy grinned at David’s reflection. “Have Frick and Frack over there managed to finish dressing without anyone getting strangled?”</p>
<p>“We’re ready,” Billy replied, shrugging into his jacket and buttoning it closed. His fit him a lot better as well, and the small part of Tommy that would probably always be keeping an eye on Billy’s health relaxed a little more.</p>
<p>“Then yeah.” Tommy pushed the held breath out of his lungs and past his lips, met David’s eyes in the mirror again, and nodded. “I’m good.”</p>
<p>The Bradleys were waiting for them when they left the room. Joe was already a big man, and the extra width he got from the dress uniform made him look like a huge blue wall even next to Eli. Chavez fell in step with the group in the hallway leading to the elevators, and Kate skidded in sideways while they waited for the doors to open. She had her hair up, pinned in place regulation-style, and for a moment Tommy felt a wave of disorientation. What right did any of them have (except for Joe, of course) to look like actual functional adults?</p>
<p>“Are you ready?” she asked, and Tommy groaned.</p>
<p>“You’re only about the eighth person to ask me that this morning,” he replied. She blew a raspberry at him and he snickered, relaxing a little bit more. Whatever happened today, life would go on and a lot of it would look the same. Or, in some ways, a hell of a lot better. So- “yeah,” Tommy was able to answer with confidence and not just bravado. “I’ve been going over practice Q&amp;As with Eli for the past week; I’ve got this.”</p>
<p>She held out her fist and he bumped knuckles, then bounced his fist off the top of hers. The elevator doors opened and they piled in, Tommy bringing up the rear.</p>
<p>It meant he was the first to exit on the administration floor, striding out into the grey and olive corridor with his head high. David and the rest of the Los Angeles Strike Group followed, fanning out behind him to fill the hall. It didn’t occur to Tommy how that must have looked until the gaggle of cadets at the other end of the hall turned, saw them, and snapped to attention so fast that he’d swear he heard their spines pop.</p>
<p>“Sir,” Jason saluted, and caught up in the formality of the moment Tommy actually returned it properly before telling them all to stand down. The week had done wonders for Jason, his confidence back. Frankly they all looked a hell of a lot better after what he assumed had been a few nights of unmanipulated sleep in their new quarters.</p>
<p>“I don’t have any inspirational speeches on deck, if that’s what you’re waiting for,” Tommy advised Jason when he didn’t relax. The kid was practically vibrating with tension until Tommy said that. The irritated side-eye he shot at Tommy as he shifted into at-ease was much better.</p>
<p>“I wasn’t expecting one, sir.” The sass came back at him and a hint of a smile flickered on Jason’s face. “I know it’s not your forte.”</p>
<p>“I’ll show you my ‘forte,’ smartass. Kwoon this afternoon, best three of five. See how that knee holds up in an actual fight.”</p>
<p>“Challenge <em>accepted</em>,” Zack’s voice came from the gaggle, and Tommy didn’t fight the grin this time.</p>
<p>“Face it, sir. You’re going to miss us when we’re gone,” Tommie told him confidently.</p>
<p>Tommy dropped the grin and put on his best scowl, just for her. “Will not. You’re all pains in my ass.”</p>
<p>The big door opened and Carol’s aide-de-camp walked out, clipboard in her hand. “Five minutes to go. Everyone head in, find seats and settle down.”</p>
<p>The buzz of chatter that filled the hall wasn’t enough to stop Tommy hearing the quiet “will too” from behind him.</p>
<p>David appeared at Tommy’s side as the crowd started to move, and gave his hand a squeeze.</p>
<p>“How about a kiss for luck?” Tommy asked, waggling his eyebrows.</p>
<p>David shook his head. “You’re not going to need it. But hold that thought and collect one for victory later.”</p><hr/>
<p>If Tommy’d thought regular briefings were tedious, they were nothing compared to the faffing around that took up the first fifteen minutes of the hearing. Tuning out the formalities and calls to order gave him a chance to figure out the committee. The bank of screens mounted on the wall was filled with faces, some of whom he didn’t recognize. Director Fury was there, which made sense; if this turned into a jurisdictional thing, the head of the PPDC would want to be there to piss on the borders of his territory. That Coulson guy from the debriefing was in another square, and he had more service ribbons on <em>his</em> jacket than Tommy would ever have expected. Interesting.</p>
<p>Ross was there, of course, and when the cameras were turned on he zeroed in on Tommy and glared at him like he was hoping Tommy would spontaneously combust right in his seat. Tommy gave him a winning smile. Who else—a severe-looking woman in an Army uniform with just as many stars on her shoulders as Ross, a couple of UN officials, and some serious-looking old people in civilian suits. Politicians? Senators. It wouldn’t be media; these proceedings were theoretically closed to the public.</p>
<p>Kitty and Doug chose that moment to slip in and take seats behind him. He glanced back and traded tight smiles with Kitty, some of his nervousness slipping through. She nodded, somewhat encouraging, and then he had to turn and try to focus on what was going on in front. Fat chance.</p>
<p>“We are called to order,” Coulson insisted for the third or fourth time, and this time people actually listened to him and settled down. Then it was more blah-blah-blah as he went through things everyone already knew. “We’re here today for clarification of the order of events and to determine further action, if any.”</p>
<p>“This entire thing is preposterous,” Ross interrupted. “Project RITA was fully authorized by the Pentagon. The <em>United Nations</em> has no jurisdiction over projects run by the United States Army, and neither does its pet robot program.” He said the UN’s name like a slur, and Tommy’s hackles went up. Coulson’s bland half-smile didn’t falter.</p>
<p>“And what exactly was Project RITA designed to do, again?” Director Fury asked, rubbing his chin with a slow finger. He was an impressive guy, from the little Tommy had seen of him; a remote figure who, if the stories were true, had solo-piloted a Mark I for more than ten minutes, once drank an entire SAS battalion under the table, and quite possibly ripped a (small) kaiju to pieces with his bare hands.</p>
<p>Looking at his composed expression and generally relaxed mood now, slouched in his chair and raising an eyebrow at the camera, Tommy couldn’t quite see it. The drinking part, maybe.</p>
<p>“Generate more pilots for <em>your</em> program!” Ross said, jabbing a finger at whatever camera was in front of him. “Frankly, your whole sideshow operation should be grateful that we’ve taken work off your hands. You have us teetering on a razor’s edge, Fury. We need more firepower, <em>overwhelming </em>firepower. Not this endless game of cat and mouse!”</p>
<p>Fury barely flinched. Whatever stress-reduction techniques they reserved for the upper echelons of the PPDC, Tommy wanted in. “Cool your jets, General. You sent your men onto one of <em>my</em> bases, interfered with <em>my</em> cadets. You can shut up and listen for a moment instead of trying to baffle us with your <em>bull</em>shit.”</p>
<p>Directors could call ‘bullshit’ on seriously high-ranking officers, in front of VIPs, at a formal hearing, and no-one blinked? In an instant, Tommy knew what he wanted to be when he grew up.</p>
<p>“Listen here, Director Fury-”</p>
<p>“No, you listen. The Corps is not an American force, and <em>we</em> don’t answer to the Pentagon. We are a paramilitary organization under international law.” Fury laid it out, stabbing his index finger into his desk for emphasis. “If the US government wants us to continue working with them, then, Senators, you’re going to need to rein in your people. Pronto.”</p>
<p>Billy leaned over to Tommy and murmured in his ear. “If this whole thing stays a dick-waving contest, think we can get out of here without testifying?”</p>
<p>Tommy snickered under his breath. “If anyone pulls out a ruler, I’m leaving,” he whispered back.</p>
<p>Carol gave them some serious side-eye, and Tommy shut up. She was taking it seriously, more so than he’d expected. But why had he doubted her? She’d apparently had a hell of a lot more faith in <em>him </em>than he’d had in her<em>. </em>It was a weird but not entirely unpleasant feeling.</p>
<p>He tuned back into the on-screen bickering in time to hear Ross change tactics. “– the so-called ‘evidence’ is garbage, and half of it was obtained through illegal espionage techniques. It all needs to be thrown out.”</p>
<p>Coulson took this one, even as Fury’s calm had started to slip. “This isn’t a criminal case, General, it’s a fact-finding hearing. The ‘fruit of a poison tree’ doctrine is intended to deter American police officers from making illegal search-and-seizures. Technically Chief Alleyne’s actions are infosec related, not criminal, and the doctrine doesn’t apply.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t just Carol. During the first debriefing Coulson had been poking at every inch of Tommy’s story, probing into all his decisions, his face totally unreadable. Only now, instead of throwing Tommy under the bus, he was actively what—defending them? It was nice to know that middle-management had the guts. Tommy revised his hopes for official backup to ‘cautiously optimistic.’</p>
<p>Coulson and Ross stopped bickering. The dust settled and the grumbling subsided. And then it was his turn.</p>
<p>Tommy stood, moved to the desk in the middle of the room and took his seat. He didn’t rush it, the little vein throbbing at Ross’ temple more than enough incentive to draw this out and be as irritating as humanly possible. It made up for not being able to punch him. A little.</p>
<p>“Please state your name, rank, and affiliation,” Wendy prompted.</p>
<p>“Ranger Thomas Jakob Maximoff, Lieutenant, Pan-Pacific Defense Corps.” Now it felt official, the reality of the situation slamming into him as he spoke himself into the permanent record.</p>
<p>Coulson’s questioning started off slow enough, giving him time to settle into his skin. “What first made you suspect that something covert was taking place?”</p>
<p>That was an easy one, and Tommy found his rhythm as he started to explain. “When the cadets reported Dr. Sterns giving them injections. He had no appropriate authority to be giving them any kind of medication, and as you see on the report from our chief medical officer, no injections were entered on their records. That’s when I got suspicious and I—<em>we</em>—started to ask questions. But it wasn’t until Cadet Cranston discovered the theta-wave projector spliced into the barracks wiring that we really started putting the pieces together.”</p>
<p>Ross harrumphed, interrupting Coulson’s examination. “This is making everything sound very dramatic, Ranger. But all the cadets signed waivers from their recruiters that confirmed their consent to ‘procedures necessary to enhance and maintain fighting readiness.’ Do recall that none of them had co-pilots prior to this project, making them useless as potential Jaeger pilots. Test them now, and I can promise you they’ll be drift compatible.”</p>
<p> “Ethical questions aside-” one of the politicians broke in, her lips pursed.</p>
<p> “-Are you <em>kidding</em> me?” Tommy shot back, incredulous.</p>
<p>Fury shook his head and spoken over them both. “Pre-emptive waivers are like prenups, General. A fiction that makes things sound tidy, but ultimately weaker than soggy toilet paper in a monsoon.”</p>
<p>Ross argued back, his mustache quivering. “We have not only a right but a <em>duty</em> to explore options for new protocols and weapon readiness. You’re all content to sit in your billion-dollar bunkers and take potshots at the enemy every few months, while we’re focusing on preparations and pre-emptive strikes. Innovation is key, Fury, and your people are already behind the times.”</p>
<p>It was devolving into another territory battle and Tommy saw his chance to do anything productive start to slip away. That, and Ross was <em>seriously</em> pissing him off. “The new Jaegers are going to knock your socks off. We’ve got all your innovation covered,” he shot back, loud enough to carry overtop of the argument. The big-wigs stopped and looked at him in surprise. So he kept going.</p>
<p>“I’m going to backtrack for a second, Senator,” he added, the recognition finally kicking in when he heard her voice, directing his next speech at the politician in her cushy, flag-draped office. “Because that whole thing you just said, ‘ethical questions aside’? It’s not possible. They can’t <em>be</em> put aside, and it’s seriously fu-” Tommy skidded to a halt, because he wasn’t a director—or even a marshal—yet. There was only so much he could get away with. He thought he saw Coulson’s lip twitch, but dismissed it as his imagination. “Seriously <em>messed</em> up to suggest that they can. When I signed up for the Academy, it was to earn the chance to be a fighter. A hero. Not a patsy for a war profiteer who sees human lives as resources to be extracted and manipulated!”</p>
<p>Joe Bradley sat in Tommy’s peripheral vision, and now <em>he</em> raised an eyebrow. He’d had advice for Tommy as well, during those hours Tommy had spent working everything out with Eli. <em>“Being passionate about your cause will hold people’s attention. Knowing when to stop talking and let the evidence speak for itself is the power move.”</em></p>
<p>Focus. Not rant. He could do this.</p>
<p>Tommy paused, drank the water sitting next to him, and reframed, sending a silent apology to the cadets for what he was about to do. He grabbed the datapad in front of him and opened his files. “May I remind the panel about the documents submitted as exhibit 6e: the heavily-redacted reports indicating that agents in the employ of General Ross’s office ran surveillance on high-school students they deemed particularly vulnerable to psychological manipulation.”</p>
<p><em>That</em> got a few reactions, and he let himself feel just a little bit smug about it. But he had a point to make. “This has never been about redressing a technological imbalance, increasing numbers of trained pilots, or making drifting accessible to more people. Project RITA was established specifically to turn children into disposable soldiers—high school football players and cheerleaders into shock troops.”</p>
<p>The woman in the generals’ stars didn’t like that, apparently, and she narrowed her eyes. “Using emotional language is not going to win points here, Ranger-”</p>
<p>“Jason Scott was literally a quarterback. Kim Hart was on her high school’s cheer squad for three years. I fail to see how facts are ‘emotional language,’ ma’am, unless you mean that hearing them is making you uncomfortable.”</p>
<p>Zing. Ten points for the good guys.</p>
<p>“But if you’d prefer we stick to facts,” Tommy conceded. Eli’d drilled him on these until he could do them without reading. He crossed his fingers mentally and hoped he was getting all the names in the right order. “Recruitment of minors. Project RITA documents—as well as their files on these specific cadets—indicate that their minimum age is fifteen. That violates the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2000. The Protocol prohibits the forces of any member state from recruiting persons under the age of eighteen and using them in hostilities.”</p>
<p>“They were all of age when they went into the Academy. That protocol doesn’t apply here!” Ross argued, bracing his hand on his desk and staring angrily.</p>
<p>“Only on a technicality. You had them in your sights before that.” He had more of their attention now, and Tommy grabbed the moment. “And while the Constitution doesn’t actually have any articles protecting bodily integrity—and we <em>definitely</em> need to work on that one, because that’s just gross—there are plenty of state and national regulations about informed consent, which the generic waivers definitely didn’t cover.</p>
<p>“Specifically, California state law-” and there he needed to check his notes, because sorry Eli, but there was no way. “-Derived from the cases of Cobbs vs. Grant and Truman vs. Thomas, ruled that doctors are required to disclose “all information relevant to a meaningful decision-making process,” which includes all risks and potential complications. Otherwise, it’s negligence. Alaska might not have the same regs, but you’re in Los Angeles now.” And he smiled winningly.</p>
<p>He had Fury and Coulson’s attention now, along with a few of the other observers, and he even noticed Carol and Rhodey trading looks. They’d underestimated him. Fair enough; he usually underestimated himself.</p>
<p>But Ross wasn’t done, and he gestured to a weaselly-looking man who’d been lurking behind him the whole time. Weasel-man flipped a page in the small spiral notebook he held and addressed the camera.  “Pardon me, Ranger, but as far as I understand it, your educational background is in… electrical engineering, not law? Otherwise you might have recalled that the Twenty-first Century Cures Act enacted by the 114th United States Congress in December 2016 means that the requirement for informed consent can be waived in the case of medical research when the process poses minimal risk, and all the appropriate safeguards are in place.”  </p>
<p>“Safeguards?” Tommy echoed in disbelief. “Cadet Scott got shot! They fell off a cliff! <em>I </em>fell off a cliff!” That last one hadn’t been Ross’ fault <em>directly</em>, but he sure as hell wasn’t about to let it go unmentioned.</p>
<p>The probability that this insanity was going to go back to calm fact-finding questions was about as likely as Col. Rhodes doing an impromptu striptease in the middle of the room, so Tommy made his final play.</p>
<p>“Look. Sirs, ma’ams, we can go on for hours citing statutes at each other, but we can all see that what happened here wasn’t even remotely in the realm of okay. Kids were manipulated and experimented on without permission, and people got hurt. Not to mention desecration of a park that I’m pretty sure is protected wilderness. Just saying,” he excused himself to Carol when she shot him a Look. “This stuff compounds.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Right. Stay on target. </em>
</p>
<p>“Not only that, but the entirely of Project RITA is founded on a terrible assumption. <em>Induced Trauma</em> isn’t the way to forge drift-compatible piloting teams, it’s what you do if you’re trying to break someone down to their component parts to manipulate them.</p>
<p>“The drift works because of human connection, because of empathy. And that’s not something that can be scientifically controlled. Once you get beyond physical brain structure, the EEGs and the baseline compatibility tests, all you’ve done is make sure there’s a minimal chance that two people aren’t going to short-circuit each other. The rest of it-” he couldn’t resist looking over his shoulder at Billy and Teddy, just a quick glance to confirm they were there. They were, of course, and from the way Teddy was beaming with such goddamn insufferable pride, Tommy was going to be hearing about this for <em>months.</em></p>
<p>He was actually okay with that.</p>
<p>“The rest of it is built on knowing each other—and being willing to <em>be </em>known. You can’t manufacture that in a lab, or beat it into people, or… or inject it like a drug. Respect, trust, even love. It’s all earned. And there’s no shortcut.”</p>
<p>He had a lot more to say but managed to bite his tongue. In his peripheral vision, Joe Bradley smiled.</p>
<p>“That was stirring, Ranger, thank you.” Tommy couldn’t tell whether Director Fury was mocking him, sincere, or somewhere in the middle, so he just nodded as a response. “Any last words?”</p>
<p>“What, before I’m taken out back and shot for sedition?” Tommy cracked back, and saw one of the senators covering her mouth to hide a laugh. <em>Gotcha.</em> He held his head high as he stood. “Yeah, actually, I do. General Ross—your guys got one thing seriously wrong. These cadets are a hell of a lot tougher than you gave them credit for. They’d have made great rangers from the jump; all your project did was slow them down. I’d rather have them at my back than the US Army, any day.”</p>
<p>He was on thin ice anyway, so he might as well dance. Ross turned purple, the hubbub rose again as the bitching intensified, and Tommy was very summarily dismissed while they fought it out across their screens.</p>
<p>He headed for his empty seat between Billy and David. Once he sat down, Kitty leaned forward and squeezed his shoulder, tight. “Yasher koach,” she said quietly, and grinned. “I think you really made an impact—on some of them at least.”</p>
<p>He covered her hand with his and squeezed back, his long exhale purging him of the stagnant air and stress that had been sitting in the bottom of his chest for far too long. He’d done what he could for his cadet, for the integrity of the corps. “Thanks. Let’s hope it was enough.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>‘Yasher koach’ [YAH-sher KOH-aḥ | יישר כח] is a western Jewish idiom used to mean ‘good job’ or ‘well done.’ ‘Kudos,’ if you will.<br/>It’s a mispronunciation and shortening of the Hebrew phrase “yishar kochacha,” which translates to “may your strength be firm”… sort of a “more power to you” idea. </p>
<p>Many North American Jews will say “yasher koach” or "sh'coyach" to someone as congratulations and acknowledgement for doing something difficult which benefits others.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Chapter 18</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Tying up some loose ends. All's right with the world.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A small brigade was waiting for Tommy down the hall from the rangers’ quarters the next morning.</p>
<p>He’d rolled out of bed in an amazing mood, up even before David’s really annoying alarm started peeping. Most of the day was supposed to be dedicated to testing Magnus’ conn-pod upgrades, an incredibly welcome distraction from worrying about the results of the committee’s deliberations. But an alert was flashing on his calendar for an early meeting with Marshal Danvers that definitely hadn’t been there the day before.</p>
<p>Dragging David into the tiny shower with him helped to destress some. David’s reassurances that there was no way he was in trouble for anything that had happened at the tribunal took some more of the edge off, but Tommy’s heart settled low in his gut as he left his room anyway.</p>
<p>At least until he turned the corner and spotted the six cadets loitering there in various stages of anticipation. His arrival seemed to be what they were waiting for, collecting together as he got within earshot.</p>
<p>“Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere?” he asked, glancing at his watch. “Breakfast? The gym?”</p>
<p>“We talked our way out of it,” Zack replied, adding a hasty ‘sir’ onto the end after a beat, combining it with a grin that wiped away any idea of disrespect.</p>
<p>“Because we told Ranger Bradley that we were hoping to see the tests for Magnus Echo’s refit conn-pod,” Cranston added on, his eyes lighting up. “Yankee Hawker had already been reassembled and redeployed by the time we arrived, so we missed the testing phase. It would be very educational,” he added, looking as innocent as if he’d polished a halo and hung it over his head.</p>
<p>“Educational,” Tommy repeated, a grin spreading on his face—one echoed by the cadets assembled in front of him. “And not a chance to see some big-ass explosions. Deliberate or otherwise.”</p>
<p>Jason grinned, hands clasped behind his back as he stood at-ease. “That too, sir.”</p>
<p>“But Dr. Foster wouldn’t let us in without your approval, so we lay in wait,” Kim said, with a sidelong glance at Jason.</p>
<p>“That, and we wanted a minute to talk to you before we leave tonight,” Tommie added, moving through the group to join Kim and Jason at the front. Tommy met her gaze. She returned it all steady and confident now, with none of the worry that had been sitting in her expression before. “Coming for us last week, and what you did yesterday—it meant a lot, sir. It <em>means </em>a lot. We know you weren’t exactly excited about this assignment, but despite everything-”</p>
<p>“<em>Because</em> of some of that everything,” Trini cut in.</p>
<p>“That too,” Tommie’s smile grew wider. “We’re a hell of a lot better than we were when we got here, individually and as a team. And if the PPDC decides to try those networked mini-jaegers someday, then who knows. We might be the first group to survive that kind of drift together.”</p>
<p>Tommy shook his head with a laugh. “That’s one hell of an assumption, and one I’m not in any rush to see tested. But I meant what I said. You’re good cadets and you’ll be great officers, wherever you end up. I’m proud of the way you handled yourselves out there.” It felt weird to say all that out loud; not at all his usual style. But after everything the cadets had been through, they deserved to hear the praise straight-on rather than buried in testimony and politics.</p>
<p>“Thank you, sir,” Jason spoke for them all. Tommy hadn’t been wrong that first day, when he’d seen the possibility, but the cadet had grown and maybe even mellowed in a way Tommy hadn’t anticipated. So had he, for that matter. “We won’t forget any of this.”</p>
<p>“I couldn’t if I wanted to,” Tommy cracked. “At least not until my ribs heal. But I draw the line at hugging anything out,” he held up a finger of warning, just in case any of them were going to try to get all emotional on him. “No touching.”</p>
<p>“What about gifts?” Kim asked, and Jason held out the thing he’d been concealing behind his back. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a small green gift bag with some tissue paper tucked in the top in an attempt at decoration. “You’re not our CO after this afternoon, so I don’t think this can be seen as bribery.”</p>
<p>“That all depends on how awesome this is,” Tommy joked, surprise taking over as he took the bag. It was heavier than it looked, and he caught it before he dropped it on the floor. “If it’s a stink bomb, you’re all court-martialled.”</p>
<p>Not a stink bomb. Tommy pushed the tissue paper aside. There was something solid in there—solid and with a handle. He pulled the mug out of the bag and turned it over to look at the lettering on the side.</p>
<p>
  <em>World’s Okayest Teacher.</em>
</p>
<p>He burst out laughing, and after a beat the cadets joined in. “Told you he’d like it,” Tommie looked smug, and Jason held up his hands in what looked like surrender.</p>
<p>“Accurate. I’ll treasure this forever,” Tommy promised, and tucked it back in the bag.</p>
<p>The responsible thing to do would be to tell them to go back to their scheduled training, or make them go pack. Instead, Tommy looked them over, and he nodded. “I’m not going to J-Tech immediately; I’ve got a meeting with the boss. But meet me down there in thirty and I’ll get you past Foster. You can watch the tests from the catwalk.”</p>
<p>“Yessss,” Zack cheered, pumping his fist. Their chatter rose excitedly behind him as Tommy set off down the hall. Despite what he’d told Carol, he was going to miss some parts of this. Teaching definitely wasn’t something he’d ever want to do full time… but as far as first reviews went, “okayest” wasn’t too bad.</p>
<p>That temporary boost to his mood started to fade the closer he got to the admin floor, and his footsteps seemed to echo louder in the empty hall as he walked toward the marshal’s office.</p>
<p>
  <em>It’ll be fine. Whatever else happens, I’ll meet it head-on.</em>
</p>
<p>His inner voice wasn’t super-convincing today.</p>
<p>He knocked. The marshal let him in.</p>
<p>And she didn’t look upset. Like, at all. “Tom! Come in, sit down,” Carol gestured at the comfortable chair across from her desk. A full coffee pot burbled away on a side table, the screen on the wall next to her desk silently playing the local news. Not a ‘pack your shit and leave my base’ meeting after all.</p>
<p>“I haven’t been in a school in years and yet I still feel like I’ve been called to the principal’s office every time I walk down that hall,” he joked, not really joking.</p>
<p>“I could get one of those old wooden benches and stick it out there, make people wait on it before their meetings. Or would that be too much?” Carol asked rhetorically. “Coffee?” Also a rhetorical question, her hand already moving for the pot handle.</p>
<p>“Sure. I even brought my own mug.” Tommy retrieved the gift mug from the bag and handed it over. “A parting gift from my cadets.”</p>
<p>Carol nodded and laughed when she turned it over. “They certainly have you figured out.” Pouring two cups of coffee, she handed one to him.</p>
<p>Tommy took it and thanked her, sinking down into the armchair across the room from her desk. Maybe he’d been suspicious in the wrong direction. Was she trying to butter him up for something instead? “If you’re planning to sweet-talk me into taking on another pack of cadets, the answer is no. That was more than enough excitement.”</p>
<p>“After you managed to turn a simple teaching assignment into an inter-service war? Slim chance.” Carol sat down with her own coffee and kicked her booted feet up on her desk. Casual, then. Tommy could do casual.</p>
<p>“You knew going in that it wasn’t going to be simple,” he reminded her, the mug warming up against his fingers and palms. “I thought that was the point.”</p>
<p>“Something like that.” Carol picked up a data pad, flicked through the screens with her thumb, and tossed it at him. He caught it out of the air, splashing some of the hot coffee over the back of his hand, and he made a face at her in response. “Outcomes from yesterday; I thought you’d want to see them for yourself. Fury’s sanctioned the Army for interfering with PPDC operations. They’re going to have reduced access across the board and limited cooperation until, and I’m quoting directly here, ‘those shit-flinging Neanderthals have their heads surgically removed from their asses and learn the basic value of human life.’”</p>
<p>“Director Fury’s got a hell of a way with words,” Tommy snorted, skim-reading the file in front of him.</p>
<p>“That was Coulson. Fury actually got crass.”</p>
<p>It was a good result, at least as far as keeping Ross out of their hair, but there were other implications that Tommy didn’t like very much. “What are we going to do about replacing the resources? The Army’s not going to be willing to share tech anymore, not if we’re pulling up the drawbridge.”</p>
<p>“DARPA’s still on board and the Canadian Forces are going to pick up some of the slack, at least until either the hue and cry die down or the Army formally sanctions Ross. This isn’t over, but the major issues have been punted upstream for the diplomats and flag officers to resolve.”</p>
<p>Tommy frowned, stuck on one particular piece of information. “Canada has an army?”</p>
<p>Carol shrugged. “Theoretically. They’ve got excellent engineers, which is the main thing. And Rhodey’s going to fly the cadets back to the Academy himself later today. To avoid any further complications.”</p>
<p>Tommy leaned over and dropped the pad on her desk, swiping a couple of drops of coffee off the screen with his sleeve. There was a bittersweetness to that, despite what he’d said. He probably was going to miss them. A little. “So you’re saying the whole mess is officially not our problem anymore.”</p>
<p>“That’s the sum of it. But it’s also not the only thing I wanted to talk to you about.” She swung her legs off her desk and faced him properly, a glint in her eye that meant trouble, incoming. “You impressed the hell out of a lot of people in that hearing yesterday. Including me, including Director Fury. I had no idea you were so passionate about human rights legislation,” she added, a little archly.</p>
<p>Tommy grinned, warm from the praise the way his hands were warm around the mug, both settling into his bones. “I had help with the research, but yeah. It was important to get it right.”</p>
<p>“That’s something I think a lot of people don’t appreciate about you. Despite all the clowning around, you know when to dig in and get things done.” Was that a compliment? It wasn’t entirely clear, so Tommy decided to believe that it was.</p>
<p>“I tell them I’m more than just a pretty face, but do they believe me?” He shrugged dramatically. “It’s good to know someone around here appreciates me for the genius that I am.”</p>
<p>“Don’t get too ahead of yourself,” Carol teased him, another piece to add to the ‘nice, but weird’ vibe he was getting from the whole conversation. When was the last time they’d sat down and talked like this, like equals? Not since she’d been a ranger, and back then most of their conversations had been about training, or combat, or drinking. The feel this time was completely different, and not at all like he was about to get suspended for fighting on the playground.</p>
<p>And then Carol kept talking and his interior monologue, always verbose, became one long, loud, sustained tire-screech.</p>
<p>“The long and short of it is that I need a deputy. You’re it.”</p>
<p>“I’m <em>what</em>? No. You want Joe Bradley, or Kate, or-” Tommy gaped. His brain spun out and he had to wrestle to get it back on track. Carol hid a smile behind the mug cradled in her hands and waited him out. “That’s a really dumb idea. You’ve had a lot of dumb ideas since we’ve known each other, Danvers, but this is <em>easily</em> the dumbest.”</p>
<p>“That’s almost word for word what I told Fury when he promoted me, only I cursed more. And guess what — the Shatterdome hasn’t slid into the ocean yet.”</p>
<p>He scrambled for a coherent and semi-respectful way to say ‘go fuck yourself.’ Despite yesterday’s flash of ambition after watching Fury rip strips off the people who annoyed him, he’d meant … <em>later. </em>Someday nebulous and far-future. When he was enough of an adult to handle responsibility. What did a deputy marshal even do? Maybe it was a way for Carol to outsource all her paperwork and make it sound important. “It will if you expect me to do all your reports. You’re not looking at the most organized guy in the world, here. Not even close.”</p>
<p>“That’s what Wendy’s for. Being my deputy doesn’t give you any major power, so don’t get too excited. Think of it more as an apprenticeship. So if I’m not around for whatever reason there’s someone here who knows what’s happening behind the scenes, and has the authorization to do something with that intel.”</p>
<p>Carol drained her coffee cup, frowned at the empty bottom and set it aside while he was still reeling. “You know the lay of the land. You know the politics now, and you sure as hell know the people and what they will or won’t do when they’re called to action. From what I’ve seen over the last few weeks, you’re going to make an excellent marshal one day.”</p>
<p>Okay fine, he knew some things about some people, but did that naturally translate to being able to make them listen? And he’d sussed out the political currents, sure, but that didn’t mean he knew what to do with all that information other than piss people off. His whole <em>thing</em> until now had been ‘the hotshot’—how did someone move from that to being ‘the boss, jr.’ and still get taken seriously?</p>
<p>Joe could probably talk him through some of that. The guy had a lot of good ideas.</p>
<p>He was seriously considering accepting the gig. He had to be out of his mind. “Joe would be a lot better at this, you know.”</p>
<p>“He doesn’t want it. Threatened to quit if I tried.”</p>
<p>Fair enough. If Tommy was smart, he’d do the same thing. “Do I get a raise?”</p>
<p>“A small one.”</p>
<p>“Can I call myself your evil vizier?”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>“Your man Friday.”</p>
<p>“That’s Wendy.”</p>
<p>“Spoilsport.” But he still had to ask the real question, the one that would keep him up at night if he didn’t. Tommy looked Carol in the eye and asked it straight. “Did Ross somehow insert his guys overnight and brainwash you into thinking this was a smart plan?”</p>
<p>Carol laughed. “Give me some credit here, Tom. You’re the right fit for this job. I know a little bit about what the PPDC needs, and what kind of leadership will keep its focus where it has to be.”</p>
<p>When she put it that way, it started to make more sense. They’d always had similar priorities. And apparently even when he was going out of his way to be a pain in her ass, she still trusted him to make the right decisions. That was a heady thought.</p>
<p>“On kicking kaiju ass?” he asked, just in case they weren’t on the same page after all.</p>
<p>Carol nodded, and held her fist out, knuckles waiting. “On kicking kaiju ass.”</p>
<p>A fistbump wasn’t the classic way to seal the deal on a promotion, but it worked for them. Maybe that was part of what she meant about the right fit. Now all Tommy had to do was break the news to Billy and Teddy that he officially outranked them. This was going to be <em>awesome</em>.</p>
<hr/>
<p>“You’re going to notice some major differences when you load in,” Darcy explained over the buzz of the technicians bolting the drivesuits’ feedback cradles into place. Tommy and Teddy exchanged a look, and Billy frowned from his spot leaning against the wall. He’d be going up to LOCCENT to plug in after they’d been briefed, but for now the gang was together.</p>
<p>“What kind of differences?”</p>
<p>“The conn-pod’s been expanded to allow for greater freedom of movement, for one thing, and we got rid of those big armatures. That tech’s totally outdated. Your drivesuits are going to interface with the HUD with only minor physical links now, and the conn-pod’s internal systems include 360-degree sensors that will pick up your movements and translate them directly to Magnus. It’s all digital and holographic, super slick,” Darcy said, tapping on her tablet to bring the schematics up on the bigger screen.</p>
<p>“No more clunky analogue pieces that can break, or lock down with pilots still in them,” Darcy finished with an apologetic look at Billy. “We get better response times down to the picosecond, and hopefully no more major head injuries.”</p>
<p>“Amen to that,” Teddy replied fervently.</p>
<p>“Which is why we’re even considering letting Tom on board before his ribs have fully healed,” Dr. Foster added, going over a series of glowing figures in the air in front of her before swiping the projected data away. “And less physical strength needed to move the jaegers means more time before pilots exhaust their reserves. It’s a vast improvement across the board.”</p>
<p>Billy straightened up from his slouch, much more attentive now. He caught Tommy’s eye, and there was no guesswork about what he was thinking. “Less strength… meaning less joint strain as well.”</p>
<p>“Roger that, ranger. No guarantees, though,” Darcy cautioned him—cautioned them all—but that was a development even Tommy hadn’t seen coming. And one that was going to take a lot more than one test run to figure out.</p>
<p>Kitty stuck her head in the door, making a deliberate show of glancing at the clock. “We’re ready to go whenever you are,” she prompted. “Just waiting on the pilots.”</p>
<p>Tommy couldn’t take much more of standing there with his helmet under his arm, <em>almost</em> able to get into his jaeger for the first time in weeks—if the science crowd would just let him <em>go</em> already. “We’re ready,” Tommy promised. “No more briefings. We’ll figure out the rest of this on the fly.”</p>
<p>Billy came with them for the tour; it would have taken an act of God to keep any of them away at that point. The catwalk felt the same, the outside looked the same—maybe a little shinier, like Magnus had gotten a really good wax and polish. Then the doors opened, and the three of them stood in the hatch; no-one stepped inside. Would she still be <em>Magnus</em> when all was said and done?</p>
<p>Billy exhaled softly and Tommy barged forward, breaking the momentary spell.</p>
<p>She smelled the same, mostly, of engine oil and ozone, sharp iron and recycled air. That was about all that had stayed. The massive armatures were gone, replaced with skinny black wires with feedback cradle ports at one end. No more pistons in the floor, either. They’d been replaced by a large flat pad.</p>
<p>“You could add a bar in here and still have extra room,” Teddy said, shaking his head as he took in the changes.</p>
<p>The space felt huge, empty, foreign… until Darcy followed them. She passed her hand over a sensor Tommy’d missed on the way in, and the 360 system burst into life. Not just a HUD anymore; they had full projections and weapons screens Tommy could swipe through, almost like he was feeling the chainsword in his hand as he went.</p>
<p>“That’s cool,” Teddy breathed out. Billy paced along the wall, making the full circuit, dragging his fingertips along the sensors and the chrome.</p>
<p>Tommy tugged at his glove, got it off, and laid his hand flat against the interior wall. He closed his eyes.</p>
<p>“What are they doing?” he heard Foster ask, as though from a distance.</p>
<p>“Communing. Give them a minute.” That was Kitty, laughter and understanding in her voice at the same time. He tuned her out as well. The vibrations tickled up through his palm, the quiet thrum of the power plant, the distant, beating heart of the machine. Magnus’ hum was quieter, smoother, but she was still there.</p>
<p>“Ready?” Teddy asked when Tommy opened his eyes.</p>
<p>“She’s ready,” Billy replied with a sharp and eager grin.</p>
<p>Tommy nodded and pulled his glove back on. The circuits at his wrist reconnected with a faint static pulse, and his own pulse began racing faster. “Hook us up, doc. I want to play.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>Hell yeah.</p>
<p>It was going to take some work to get used to ducking when they wanted Magnus to duck, instead of swiping through options on the HUD, but she moved slicker than greased owl-shit now with barely any effort.</p>
<p>If only they could put her through her paces for real! “Come on,” Tommy coaxed—<em>begged</em>—over the radio, his copilots laughing at him inside his head. “Magnus works perfectly. Forget this test-harness bullshit. Let us out of the ‘dome so we can open up the throttle and see what she can really do.”</p>
<p><em>/Negative, Ranger,/</em> David’s voice came back to him over the radio, laughter in that too. <em>/There’s a specific test sequence we need to cover before you’re approved for an ocean trial./</em></p>
<p>“I’ll tell you what you can do with your test sequence.”</p>
<p><em>/Have patience you must,/ </em>David replied, because he was a cruel, cold-hearted man. <em>/Right arm, full rotation./</em></p>
<p>“Right arm, full rotation,” Tommy repeated, with a long-suffering groan as he moved. “How much more of this aerobics class do we have to live through? I’m willing to bribe people,” he offered. He slammed the wall down on the lewd images that came to mind before Teddy and Billy saw them, but the vibe carried through. He got the neural-bridge equivalent of eggs thrown at him in the drift in reply.</p>
<p>  <span class="driftTommy"><em>~Real mature, guys.~ </em></span></p>
<p><em>  <span class="driftTeddy">~Offer David butter tarts and see if he’ll give in.~</span></em>  </p>
<p>  <span class="driftBilly"><em>~Is that what we’re calling it now?~</em></span></p>
<p>
  <em>  <span class="driftTeddy">~It wasn’t until you said that.~</span></em>
</p>
<p>Faint chatter came through the radio, words that Tommy couldn’t make out clearly but Billy could from his post in LOCCENT. His report came through the drift moments before David returned to the mic.</p>
<p>  <span class="driftBilly"><em>~Victory. Carol’s authorizing outside tests.~</em></span></p>
<p>  <span class="driftTommy"><em>~Sometimes being annoying and whiny pays off.~</em></span></p>
<p>/<em>Here’s the deal,/ </em>David offered, and Tommy grinned inside his helmet. /<em>Five more sequences without giving me any shit about it, and you can go outside for recess.</em>/</p>
<p>“Deal,” Teddy replied immediately, before Tommy had a chance to open his mouth.</p>
<p>Tommy smiled wide, little pops of laughter and affection in the drifting part of his brain buoying his good mood up higher. “Five minutes? Not a problem. Bring it.” And he threw himself into the tests, just so that no-one could possibly complain about his performance. He sank deeper into the connection, curled his hand/Teddy curled his hand and the massive titanium fist went with them.</p>
<p>Magnus moved with their every whim, and it almost felt like she was breathing in time with them too.</p>
<p>A year and a half. No, a lot more. That was how long he’d been waiting for this moment, without knowing what he’d been searching for. Now Teddy was on his left, Billy in his head, and David was in his ear.</p>
<p>All the pieces of his puzzle snapped fully, <em>finally</em>, into place.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Later that night, endorphins still running high, Tommy sat down at his computer and opened his mail. One message still sat there unanswered, the reply long overdue.</p>
<p>His stomach turned over and he hesitated, but the flip didn’t turn into panic, or nausea, or rage. That was progress. Tommy clicked ‘reply’ and began to type.</p>
<p>
  <em>Grand-dad,</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>It’s been a while. Lots has happened since the last time we talked. Years of stuff. Some of it’s been in the news, a lot of it hasn’t. But if this was just a welfare check, then you can rest easy. We’re doing fine. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Billy’s the same as he ever was, and we’re both seeing people. His boyfriend’s pretty cool, but mine is better. I got promoted at work recently; ‘Deputy Marshal Tom Maximoff’ has a good ring to it. That’ll probably show up in a press release soon if you’re still tracking those.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>If you happen to swing through LA one day, let me know. Maybe we could do dinner. Catch up. I know a few good places that are still standing. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <strike>Xoxo   </strike>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <strike>Take care </strike>
  </em>
  <strike></strike>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <strike>Sincerely</strike>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Yours, Tom.</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>There's an epilogue still to come, so don't unsubscribe just yet!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Epilogue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The end of an era! A time jump, a POV jump, and a happily-ever-after.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>August, 2026. </strong>
</p><p>Twelve years after the Breach first opened and Trespasser changed the world, the rangers of the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps made their final, desperate stand. The Breach was closed, the kaiju incursions ceased, and peace returned to the planet.</p><p>A year and change after that, Commander David Alleyne, Ret., had finally started to unwind.</p><p>The California real estate market was still a train wreck and would be for a long time, but that had made it possible for them to afford the ranch-style house with the long circular driveway David was now pulling into. Their only major request for the agent had been ‘no ocean view.’ She’d laughed, but understood.</p><p>David parked and grabbed his suit jacket from the back seat of his car, along with the monogrammed leather briefcase Tommy’d given him on his first day at the new job. <em>“Grown-up civilian job needs grown-up civilian accessories. It’ll make the look more convincing.”</em> David smiled at the memory, slinging the strap over his shoulder as he headed up the paving-stone walk. The setting sun tinged the evening rose-gold, and as he turned his key in the lock, David felt the stresses of the day slough away.</p><p>He was home.</p><p>He wasn’t the only one, the sound of a conversation — no, half a conversation — coming from the living room.</p><p>“Much like the gate abstraction went hand in hand with the static discipline which dictated the valid range for applied inputs and expected outputs, the amplifier abstraction is associated with the saturation discipline, which prescribes constraints-”</p><p>David nudged the guitar case out of the way and followed the voice, turning the corner into the open-plan space. Captain Thomas Maximoff, PPDC Deputy Marshal, hero of the Kaiju War, darling of the talk media circuit and inspiration to millions, was lying on the hardwood floor, wearing one of David’s t-shirts and a pair of ripped jeans, his head and shoulders inside the dog crate.</p><p>Head, shoulders, and e-reader, David amended his mental tally. Artemis was in there with him, the greyhound curled up on the massive dog bed, her long, narrow head resting on Tommy’s shoulder as he read aloud. </p><p>David stayed in the doorway for a minute longer, pausing to admire the view. Moments like this were still special. It had taken them — all three of them now, if you included Artemis and her separation anxiety — too long to remember how to relax. The warm glow of the sunset played over them both through the large bay windows, touching Tommy’s white hair and Artemis’ grey pelt with gold. Tommy’s lean frame was a little softer now, freed from the desperate need for heroes that used to keep him in the gym or the kwoon six hours a day, and a slim platinum band glinted on his finger where David had staked his permanent claim.</p><p>
  <em>Mine.</em>
</p><p>It hadn’t gone exactly like that, of course.</p><p>
  <em>The data came from Hong Kong, the curve undeniable. Another double event, then triple, and then if they couldn’t stop it—the end of the world. Tommy watched over his shoulder as David ran through the math one more time before conceding that there hadn’t been an error.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>David leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes behind his glasses, sore from staring at the screen for so long. And he said the only thing that came to mind. </em>
  <em>“We should get married.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Tommy</em>
  <em> frowned, and folded his arms across his chest. “That bad?” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“We have six months to find a hail-Mary play with any chance in hell of success. When we make a move, you’re going to be smack in the middle of it. If the worst happens it won’t matter. But if you end up hurt-” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He didn’t need</em>
  <em> to say the rest out loud, the image of the medical wing looming large in both their minds. “We need paperwork,” Tommy finished the sentence for him. “If I go down Teddy goes down with me, and Billy won’t be in any shape to make decisions for both of us. It’s the right move. I’ll marry you, on one condition.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>That stung, uncharitably so, and David swallowed against the hard lump in his throat. How could they be five years in, and he not notice that Tommy still had one toe out the door? </em>
  <em>“A condition? You’re not serious. What kind of ‘condition’?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“If we save the world and I survive, you’re still stuck with me.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He leaned over and cupped David’s face in his hands. His kiss answered every question that David hadn’t asked. “And I fully plan on surviving.”</em>
</p><p>It wasn’t exactly sentimental, at least on the surface. David knew better.</p><p>Now, Tommy lowered the e-reader and caught David staring. His knowing smirk appeared for a moment before Artemis got annoyed by the shift in his attention and swiped her tongue across his face.</p><p>“Blargh! Gross, dog. Welcome home, I ordered dinner,” he called out to David’s retreating back.</p><p>Chuckling, David left just long enough to duck into the kitchen. A pizza box was staying warm in the oven, the half that was left layered thick with the onions that David liked and Tommy despised. There’d been one bottle of the good beer left in the fridge from the weekend—when he opened the door, he found another six chilling that hadn’t been there that morning.</p><p>Affectionate words were very nice, but this form of <em>I love you</em> had become David’s favourite by far.</p><p>He grabbed two bottles and his pizza and headed back to the living room. Tommy was sitting up against the couch when he got there. Artemis stretched in the door of her crate, yawning wide enough that David could have fit his whole head between her jaws. </p><p>He handed one of the bottles to Tommy and sat on the floor beside him, accepting the ‘welcome home’ kiss with familiar ease. “Giving the dog a tutorial?”</p><p>“She was whiny when I got home, even after a run. So we’ve been hanging while I study.” Tommy settled in, sagging bonelessly against David’s side, trusting him completely not to move. “Office still standing?”</p><p>“Not if I have to sit through any more supply chain meetings, it won’t be. I have no idea how I even ended up on that committee. I’m a research lead, not a procurement guy.”</p><p>“They know you’re more competent than anyone else there, so they’re putting you where you can do the most good. Or the least damage,” Tommy added, a glint in his eye and a grin on his face. David nudged him in the ribs and Tommy chuckled, not shifting his weight.</p><p>“That sounds about right,” David grumbled. He took a swig from his beer and drained a decent part of the bottle, Artemis making a big show of sniffing him and then flopping dramatically at his other side. He ruffled the velvet-soft fur along her flank and she rolled onto her back, presenting her belly for rubs. “Anything exciting happen today?”</p><p>“Shatterdome was blissfully quiet. Billy texted while I was in class, though. Then called. And then texted,” Tommy offered, amusement and exasperation laced through his voice. “He’s already freaking out about cribs and car seats.”</p><p>David arched an eyebrow. “I thought their surrogate wasn’t due for another what… four months?”</p><p>Tommy snorted affectionately. “This is my brother we’re talking about. He’ll be a walking panic attack for the next eighteen years, minimum.”</p><p>Now there was a mental image. Billy and Teddy would be good parents though. At least Teddy would be calm enough to coax everyone through the next few months without some kind of massive implosion. David dug his fingers into Artemis’s fur, a thought occurring to him that they probably should have dealt with at some point. He’d been caught up in Tommy’s wake for so long and loved him so fiercely that the answer wouldn’t have changed his mind. On the other hand-</p><p>“Do you ever think about going through that? Now that we’ve got front-row seats to the process?” David asked cautiously, watching Tommy’s face to gauge the expressions that flickered across it. They started with a faintly skeptical nose-wrinkle, and he relaxed.</p><p>“Not really,” Tommy shrugged off the question. “Between Billy’s kids and however many Kim ends up having, in a few years we’ll have more ankle-biters around the place than we know what to do with. I’m happy being a fun-uncle. Funcle. At least then we can give them back when they’re pains in the ass.” He glanced at David then, with a faintly wary look. “Are <em>you</em> still happy like this? Just us?”</p><p>And the addendum that he’d never say out loud again, but that David could hear floating somewhere underneath. <em>Is this enough?</em></p><p>The question deserved real thought rather than a knee-jerk reaction, and David considered the possibilities. Kids with Tommy? He didn’t <em>mind</em> children, in the abstract. But it was different, so he’d been told, when they were your own.</p><p>He thought back over the past decade — the years when they’d just been friends, and those that had followed. They’d been fighting a war for ninety percent of that time and now they had plans, <em>could</em> have plans that didn’t have to be put on hold every time a sensor screamed on the ocean floor.</p><p>They’d settled into a good routine, now that they’d found a balance between Tommy’s impulsivity and David’s lapses into seriousness. Civilian life at a think tank was becoming less of a mystery and more of an intriguing challenge every week. Tommy was juggling both school and service to a PPDC that was still trying to figure out what the hell to do with itself, less than two semesters away from actually finishing his long-paused engineering degree. They had a standing Thursday night date at one of their old clubs from the war years, lazy Sundays when they didn’t get out of bed until at least noon, and a vintage motorcycle in pieces in the driveway that Tommy was slowly reassembling.</p><p>And on top of all the practical considerations, there was the ephemeral; the sheer beauty of just being able to <em>stop </em>for a while and accept being loved with all the intensity that Tommy had to offer.</p><p>When examined like that, the answer was fairly clear. “Yeah. I am.”</p><p>“Excellent. Funcles for the win.” Tommy grinned and tapped the bottle in David’s hand with the side of his own, then took a swig.</p><p>David snorted, shaking his head at Tommy in fond amusement. “I love you, but I am never using that abomination of a word.”</p><p>Tommy pushed off the couch with his elbows, just enough to turn and press his mouth to David’s. He tasted like beer and pizza, and David’s hand found its way into Tommy’s hair, holding him steady. Tommy broke the kiss only long enough to murmur, with a twinkle in his eye. “I’ll wear you down eventually.”</p><p>It was a moment so purely <em>him </em>that it flung David back to the beginning, to the moment that overconfident, hyper-verbal mess of a jaeger pilot had first swaggered into the Shatterdome with his twin. If David had known then the kinds of chaos the Maximoffs would carry in their wake — if he could go back in time and warn himself about what the next decade was going to bring — he’d have made almost all of the same choices. As long as they would still lead him here.</p><p>He leaned his forehead against Tommy’s, soaking in his warmth and the vibrancy of his… <em>everything. </em>Overwhelmed by the rush of feeling and of memory, he laughed softly against Tommy’s lips. “You’re welcome to try.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Textbook quote from Agarwal and Lang, Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits (2005), p. 352</p><p>*</p><p>Thank you so, so much to everyone who's stuck with me on this long and winding road. I have had so much fun playing in this universe, and it's with a melancholy heart that I'm closing it down. I've said what I wanted to say, for the most part. </p><p>If anyone wants to play here, please do. I'm 100% open to remixes, missing scenes, comic versions, fanart... I'd love to read and squee over it all!</p><p>Come play with me on tumblr or twitter! <b><a href="https://ardatli.tumblr.com/">ardatli.tumblr.com</a></b> and <b><a href="https://twitter.com/JennetAlexander">@jennetalexander </a></b></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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